Macbook Pro with Apple silicon

[greyowl]

Hello all,
    New member here
    I majored in EE in college but took CS job after graduate. I am looking forward to getting back to EE as a serious hobby.  I am wondering if PC/Windows is pretty much the only game in town? I am going through Andre LaMothe's udemy class and he mentioned that most professional shops use Windows/PC and his class uses software that are Windows only. I do not have plan to shift my career but I'd like to learn/use the best tool for the job.
    I am about to fork $3k for an Apple Silicon Macbook Pro to replace my 9 years old laptop. The new laptop won't be able to run an X86 VM, at least not at acceptable performance level. If best tools are mostly Windows only then I might have to reconsider my decision.

Thanks!
   

[Weston]

The biggest EE related tool I can think of that do not run on OSX are Altium (Windows only) and some of the FPGA toolchains like Vivado (linux and Windows).

You should be able to get away with running tools like Vivado in a VM, there is no computationally intense UI.

In regards to Altium, if this is for hobby stuff you will probably use KiCad anyways. Most open source electronics projects use KiCad as well as a number of companies now-days. KiCad can also open schematics / PCB layouts produced from most of the other PCB layout packages.

[greyowl]

Thank you, good to know! In Andre's course, he used Proteus for simulation, Is there an open source or free simulator like KiCad for PCB design?

[Weston]

LTSpice is free (but not open source) and runs on OSX and Windows (and on Linux through Wine) and is pretty well featured. Its used pretty widely in industry and academia. I would strongly recommend it.


There is also some simulation capability built in (linked to?) KiCad using ngspice, which is free and open source. However, the feature set of ngspice is not very good. I would recommend using LTSpice.

[m98]

Since the M1 Pro/Max blows every other mobile computer out of the water by quite some margin, I wouldn't even consider any other platform if I where to buy a new laptop. Windows should also work just fine using Parallels. But you shouldn't really need any windows-only software for hobby electronics purposes. You're not going to use tools like ADS or Maxwell, or the paid FPGA toolchains that lift the artificial performance constraints. Other than that, modern embedded toolchains are mostly just at home on Linux and mac OS.

[nctnico]

The reality is that there will always be engineering tools that are Windows only (at least until the end of this decade). For engineering I'd stick with the x86 platform so at least you can get decent performance from a VM. For example: recently some very good simulators are now released as freeware (Microcap 12 for example) but these are Windows only.

[james_s]

For the most part I like the Macbook Pro issued by my employer but the latest models have that idiotic notch cut out of the screen which is a deal breaker for me.

For EE work you'd have to be a masochist to get anything that is not x86, VMs can be troublesome with any sort of external hardware like programming cables and you're going to have to spend a lot of time in Windows or Linux one way or another. Mac is a very, very distant third in that field.

[jc101]

Since the M1 Pro/Max blows every other mobile computer out of the water by quite some margin, I wouldn't even consider any other platform if I where to buy a new laptop. Windows should also work just fine using Parallels. But you shouldn't really need any windows-only software for hobby electronics purposes. You're not going to use tools like ADS or Maxwell, or the paid FPGA toolchains that lift the artificial performance constraints. Other than that, modern embedded toolchains are mostly just at home on Linux and mac OS.

I don't think you can run x86 Windows in a VM on an M1 Pro/Max, you need an ARM version of Windows.  So far, that hasn't been forthcoming from Microsoft, and then you would also need ARM compiled Windows apps too.

[mon2]

IMHO, you are fighting mother nature. Stick with a quality Windows box for the best results. We have been repairing the Apple line locally (10+ years) and the closed architecture make these latest models impossible to service at the component level.

For the best productivity, stick with Windows. Otherwise, you will be wasting valuable time stabilizing tools that are just not perfected for the Mac platforms.

[Keith956]

LTSpice is free (but not open source) and runs on OSX and Windows (and on Linux through Wine) and is pretty well featured. Its used pretty widely in industry and academia. I would strongly recommend it.


There is also some simulation capability built in (linked to?) KiCad using ngspice, which is free and open source. However, the feature set of ngspice is not very good. I would recommend using LTSpice.

LTSpice on Mac has an atrocious user interface that must have been designed by a clown. I have a Macbook pro and a WIndows PC and only ever run it under Windows, it's that bad.

[Bassman59]

LTSpice is free (but not open source) and runs on OSX and Windows (and on Linux through Wine) and is pretty well featured. Its used pretty widely in industry and academia. I would strongly recommend it.


There is also some simulation capability built in (linked to?) KiCad using ngspice, which is free and open source. However, the feature set of ngspice is not very good. I would recommend using LTSpice.

LTSpice on Mac has an atrocious user interface that must have been designed by a clown. I have a Macbook pro and a WIndows PC and only ever run it under Windows, it's that bad.

To be fair, the Windows version of the UI sucks too. It has always been shitty.

The problem is that the Mac version of LTSpice is close to the Windows version but ... not completely there. The two versions share the same silly function-key user interface (F6 for copy, F7 for move, F8 for drag, F3 for wire, F5 for cut, see, i know them!), but there are some things missing. Like on the Mac you can't tell the program where to store the ephemeral files created during simulation. And there's no dialog for entering simulation commands; you have to add a Spice control text box and you have to look up the syntax for your analysis type. And yeah, after awhile you know the syntax, but why oh why is that dialog missing?

Then there's the whole thing about adding your own library parts.

[Caliaxy]

Not sure it's an issue for you, but the Windows version of PicoScope (controlling software for a high-quality USB oscilloscope) has features and options which were not implemented in the MacOs version. Same for NI Labview (true for both the NI software and the hardware drivers made by different manufacturers).

Matlab, on the other hand, seems to work similarly on both platforms.

[montemcguire]

Then there's the whole thing about adding your own library parts.

Is it really much different between Mac and Windows? I have around 450 models that are on my Mac and also on a Windows 10 machine (both of which run LTspice XVII) that I had to install by hand onto each machine and sync by hand between the two. The basic installation was tedious for both Mac and PC, and not fundamentally different for either platform. The models had to be on local disks for performance, and the same tedious "make a part" procedure had to be used for both platforms.

What would be more ideal is some sort of ability to efficiently use one networked library, or even a remote directory. Regardless, the tools are "what they are" and you can either get work done with them or not.

To the OP, I don't think Parallels will be able to provide a Windows VM on M1, and honestly, an M1 is only about 2x faster than a fast i7. It's not like a factor of 10, and honestly, unless your simulation is really a mess, it's not often that they grind that slowly. I have a 6 year old i7 MacBook Pro that's 2x slower than a fancy new i7 10700 Win10 desktop, and it's almost never that I notice any significant speed difference. Fixing the simulation always provides the best speed-up. Still, I do use the desktop when I cannot figure out how to fix the simulation and I need to grind on it repeatedly while I figure out how to make it un-broken. On the laptop, the CPU heats up too much for my comfort, so I have the desktop for brute force goofiness like this.

My summary is that a modern, fast i7 Mac and VMware Fusion will give you the best of both worlds for a few years more until it all falls off the grid. At that point, I'll have to rebuild everything, move off of my Eagle based world, and KiCad will be the new thing, and the new CPUs will be even nicer than M1. I say "get what works now" and just be happy.

Regards,

Monte McGuire

[KaneTW]

Getting a Mac for any CAD is less than ideal. Just get a nice x86 laptop if you plan to do anything requiring Windows. Even Linux versions for the apps that have them are x86 only.

[perieanuo]

hi, almost everything serious in ee starts in win; why? cause it's the big market out there. apple is fancy looking stuff, linux is generic server/network king
kicad in ee professional area is a joke, don't take this seriously, for hobby thhere are other stable alternatives like eagle diptrace and so on. just my 2c here, nobody has to agree or validate this. working in ee from more than 2 decades

[SpacedCowboy]

I don't think you can run x86 Windows in a VM on an M1 Pro/Max, you need an ARM version of Windows.  So far, that hasn't been forthcoming from Microsoft, and then you would also need ARM compiled Windows apps too.

Progress is being made along those lines. I have a Parallels subscription, and just got a new Mac Studio Ultra. I thought the same as you, but on a whim, tried to install it since it said it ran on the M1. Results were:

• Parallels installed fine, and asked if I wanted to go grab Windows 11. I let it do so, and it installed it seamlessly
• What it doesn't say is that this is the Arm version of Windows 11, however it lets you run x86 applications via the Windows x86 emulator
• To see if this actually worked, I downloaded the (x86) Efinix FPGA tools (they're a lot smaller than Vivado!), which installed fine, and Efinity launched great
• However: when Efinity tried to launch sub-task applications (eg: the interface designer), it would launch and immediately exit. Without the designer package, you're reduced to script-based design for all your io/pll etc. Not as much fun.
• Also: I *believe* that the x86 emulator on Windows doesn't emulate device drivers as yet, so if you want to install an x86 device driver for some hardware, you're SOL. System-included drivers will work of course

So. Delete the Windows VM... It's actually worse for Linux VMs because they're still Arm-only, the tools are all provided for x86, and there's no emulator to x86 - that's a Microsoft feature, not a Parallels feature. For me, Cad is more of a hobby than anything else, so the new Mac made sense, but I'm not sure I'd buy an M1 Mac for CAD just yet.

I pinged Efinix about their UI - maybe there's something they can do (it may even be Win-11's fault) - but as someone else here said, the Mac is a distant third-place in cad-tools (which makes me sad). I have had a lot of good experience with Parallels and VMs on the x86 MBP, but that ship has sailed now, the Mac won't be going back to Intel IMHO. What I do is have a linux box connected by a 10G network, and it's as good as being local for the most part. Threadrippers are nice if you can keep them out of the way and out of hearing distance

[kalhana]

LTSpice is free (but not open source) and runs on OSX and Windows (and on Linux through Wine) and is pretty well featured. Its used pretty widely in industry and academia. I would strongly recommend it.


There is also some simulation capability built in (linked to?) KiCad using ngspice, which is free and open source. However, the feature set of ngspice is not very good. I would recommend using LTSpice.

LTSpice on Mac has an atrocious user interface that must have been designed by a clown. I have a Macbook pro and a WIndows PC and only ever run it under Windows, it's that bad.

To be fair, the Windows version of the UI sucks too. It has always been shitty.

The problem is that the Mac version of LTSpice is close to the Windows version but ... not completely there. The two versions share the same silly function-key user interface (F6 for copy, F7 for move, F8 for drag, F3 for wire, F5 for cut, see, i know them!), but there are some things missing. Like on the Mac you can't tell the program where to store the ephemeral files created during simulation. And there's no dialog for entering simulation commands; you have to add a Spice control text box and you have to look up the syntax for your analysis type. And yeah, after awhile you know the syntax, but why oh why is that dialog missing?

Then there's the whole thing about adding your own library parts.

I emailed them back in 2014 about it and Mike himself replied the following. A few years later, I went to an Analog Devices event and went to his talk about LTSpice. He seems to be a genius in maths and electronics, but not a good UX designer IMHO.

My email:
"Hi, Why does the LTSpice OS X version have a really outdated appearance compared to the windows version? It doesn't even have a proper toolbar. When do you plan on updating it with support for retina graphics as well? It looks like from the 1970s! Pretty hopeless!"

Response:
"On the PC version, I added many features over the course of 15 years
but never changed the software in the interest of not confusing
established users.  In hindsight, this might have been a mistake.
For example, the tool bar was added as an after thought since people
in the 1990's thought that a GUI meant bitmaps.  But skilled users
knew all along that everything was available by right mouse click
menus and moving the mouse all the way up to the top of the screen
just to have to move it back to the schematic area was a waste of
effort.

On the Mac Version, I removed the parts of the GUI which I never use.
I removed the toolbar from the Mac version because all it did on
the Windows version is teach people the wrong way to use the software.
Use the right click menus instead so you don't have to move your
mouse so much.

--Mike"

[bd139]

Appears Mike might need to ask the users and also read the manual rather than serve everyone what he thinks is right:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/platforms/designing-for-macos/

Running M1 MacBook Pro here for everything. Kicad is fine. LTspice is the most horribly ported macOS application I have ever used. It does not need a lot of work to make it usable:

1. Proper toolbars, contrary to Mike's opinion
2. Editors similar to the ones on windows for different simulation types.
3. Lots of weird placement bugs fixed
4. Better shortcut keys. F-keys should not really be used on the mac. Fn+F = painful.
5. Please don't copy a pile of shit into my user profile (examples etc) when you install it. This is not needed!
6. Stick it in the app store as well as have a download version.

Could really be a killer application on macOS with some better stewardship and focus.

[Bassman59]

Appears Mike might need to ask the users and also read the manual rather than serve everyone what he thinks is right:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/platforms/designing-for-macos/

Running M1 MacBook Pro here for everything. Kicad is fine. LTspice is the most horribly ported macOS application I have ever used. It does not need a lot of work to make it usable:

1. Proper toolbars, contrary to Mike's opinion
2. Editors similar to the ones on windows for different simulation types.
3. Lots of weird placement bugs fixed
4. Better shortcut keys. F-keys should not really be used on the mac. Fn+F = painful.
5. Please don't copy a pile of shit into my user profile (examples etc) when you install it. This is not needed!
6. Stick it in the app store as well as have a download version.

Could really be a killer application on macOS with some better stewardship and focus.

All of this, especially the fact that just because Mike didn't use something (like the menu bar) doesn't mean that other uses won't bother with it, too, or that users actually expect it.

Apple has decades of experience in doing user interfaces, and Mike has his own opinions. I have an opinion, too, about his user interface.

[bd139]

Perhaps AD should open source it. I am fairly experienced with cocoa, objective C and swift and would contribute to it.

Actually to add to this, the windows version doesn’t adhere to the windows UI conventions either (any of the numerous attempts to change them  )

[Bassman59]

Perhaps AD should open source it. I am fairly experienced with cocoa, objective C and swift and would contribute to it.

Part of the problem is that Linear Tech (and now Analog) kept the models for many of their switcher chips proprietary (they aren't text-based SPICE, as such), so it's doubtful they would consider opening up the simulation engine.

I have been looking at using KiCad to drive ngspice, but haven't gotten very far. LTSpice is too convenient.

Actually to add to this, the windows version doesn’t adhere to the windows UI conventions either (any of the numerous attempts to change them  )

It adheres to Mike's wacky conventions.

[bd139]

So really the situation is:

1. LTspice is 100% proprietary
2. LTspice exists to serve AD only (fair enough on it's own)
3. The mac port sucks
4. ngspice is an acceptable alternative simulation engine

What I'm seeing here is the requirement for a Mac native ngspice front end?

Perhaps I should write one 

[Bassman59]

So really the situation is:

1. LTspice is 100% proprietary
2. LTspice exists to serve AD only (fair enough on it's own)
3. The mac port sucks
4. ngspice is an acceptable alternative simulation engine

What I'm seeing here is the requirement for a Mac native ngspice front end?

Perhaps I should write one 

MacSpice 3 works well and is actively maintained -- he even has built universal binaries, so it runs native on M1 as well as Intel Macs.

The only issue is that its input is standard SPICE text files. There's no schematic capture. Which may or may not be a concern, if you know how to write SPICE files, or if you've got the skillz to tell your favorite schematic capture tool to generate a SPICE netlist.

[bd139]

yeah that's what I'm using now.

Schematic capture is GoodNotes on the iPad

[kalhana]

Hello all,
    New member here
    I majored in EE in college but took CS job after graduate. I am looking forward to getting back to EE as a serious hobby.  I am wondering if PC/Windows is pretty much the only game in town? I am going through Andre LaMothe's udemy class and he mentioned that most professional shops use Windows/PC and his class uses software that are Windows only. I do not have plan to shift my career but I'd like to learn/use the best tool for the job.
    I am about to fork $3k for an Apple Silicon Macbook Pro to replace my 9 years old laptop. The new laptop won't be able to run an X86 VM, at least not at acceptable performance level. If best tools are mostly Windows only then I might have to reconsider my decision.

Thanks!
   

I have been using MacBook Pros professionally for EE for over 10 years. I have been using Parallels VM for the SW that I need to use that only runs on Windows such as Altium.
Every single SW I needed worked perfectly on Parallels VM for Intel Macs (even things that need high speed I/O like Tektronix SignalVu for USB3 spectrum analysers).

Last year I was thinking whether to upgrade my 7 year old MBP to Apple M1 MBP, but decided to go for an Intel i9-9980HK 16" one since Altium won't work reliably on M1.

Nowadays for most of the Windows based EE SW that I use such as Vivado, Vitis etc, I log on to the high performance PCs in the office and use RDP (although I do have those SW on the VM, it's faster and easier to use the office PCs that are also connected to HW setups). But for Altium, RDP is too laggy and the 3D mouse doesn't work over RDP.

But I'm hoping that over the next few years, there will be a solution to get Altium working on Apple silicon since they won't make any Intel Macs in future.

So if you also have access to a PC, then going for Apple silicon is probably ok, but I wouldn't personally go for it if that was the only machine I would be using (until (if) these issues are fixed over the next few years).

[bd139]

Altium may work in Crossover: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

Not tried it. LTspice for Windows does work though.

I have a spare windows laptop, an old Lenovo T440, if I need to run anything specific to windows. Which is rarely, if ever these days.

[kalhana]

Thanks. That's good to know and hopefully performance and support will improve over time.
When I was upgrading last year, people seemed to have mixed results and laggy performance for Altium (on reddit), so I didn't want to risk it.

[wizard69]

Here is a few points that you might want to consider if you are about to buy an Apple Silicon Mac.  Understand that I have an M1 MBA and a Linux box at home.   At work I have a really bad but brand new Windows surface machine (managed by the IT department)

• The performance of these M1 based machines is surprisingly good.
• Software has been ported to ARM at a surprisingly fast rate, faster than I expected and in most case leading to better performance.
• This fast software porting to M1 has resulted in much of the open source world running native.  Most of homebrew is native these days.
• A port of Linux to the platform is coming along slowly.   However I will not install Linux until I phase out this machine as my primary Mac OS platform.
• So far kiCAD and other CAD tools seem to run as well as they do on Linux.   In fact because Mac OS is Unix, for the most part the apps run better than on Windows.
• Python and other tools run just like they do on Linux so again trouble free compared to Windows.

Now about Windows.   Unless you work hard on backwards compatibility a lot of software has been left behind with the advent of 64bit windows.   Since I work in the industrial sector we have a lot of special function windows software that just doesn't run on modern windows operating systems.   YOu can't really assume that Windows will run legacy software, in most cases it will not.

So you really need to look at what is actively supported software.   If the software you want to use is on the Apple platform you are golden.   If not; you need to determine if alternative software is available or emulation will work.   

By the way there is no "BEST" software.    That can lead to making poor platform choices.   Instead consider what your needs are and if the platform in question supports those needs.

[PlainName]

If the software you want to use is on the Apple platform you are golden.

Are you saying you can take any random program from, say, 1999 and run it as-is on current Macs?

[Bassman59]

If the software you want to use is on the Apple platform you are golden.

Are you saying you can take any random program from, say, 1999 and run it as-is on current Macs?

Applications must be 64-bit to run on current Macs and current macOS.

[PlainName]

If the software you want to use is on the Apple platform you are golden.

Are you saying you can take any random program from, say, 1999 and run it as-is on current Macs?

Applications must be 64-bit to run on current Macs and current macOS.

So perhaps not as golden as Windows, then - any 32-bit app should be fine on current Windows, and 32-bit goes back a looong way. As an example, I just run up an application that was last updated in 2004, and it also ran an addon (basically a DLL) which was written in 1996.

Could a current Mac do that?

[bd139]

No 64 bit only. The current Rosetta translation will run x86-64 Mach binaries on ARM64 though. Haven’t had a 32 bit binary on macOS for a number of years so meh.

You can run 32 bit macOS and windows in UTM if you need it though via qemu.

I don’t rate windows binary compat. It looks like it works but there are so many edge cases that’s it’s unusable. I had to keep a windows NT4 box spinning until 2019 as a EDI dialler because it didn’t work on anything later.

[John Nielsen]

Here is a few points that you might want to consider if you are about to buy an Apple Silicon Mac.  Understand that I have an M1 MBA and a Linux box at home.   At work I have a really bad but brand new Windows surface machine (managed by the IT department)

• The performance of these M1 based machines is surprisingly good.
• Software has been ported to ARM at a surprisingly fast rate, faster than I expected and in most case leading to better performance.
• This fast software porting to M1 has resulted in much of the open source world running native.  Most of homebrew is native these days.
• A port of Linux to the platform is coming along slowly.   However I will not install Linux until I phase out this machine as my primary Mac OS platform.
• So far kiCAD and other CAD tools seem to run as well as they do on Linux.   In fact because Mac OS is Unix, for the most part the apps run better than on Windows.
• Python and other tools run just like they do on Linux so again trouble free compared to Windows.

I didn't know that, thanks


[/list]

Now about Windows.   Unless you work hard on backwards compatibility a lot of software has been left behind with the advent of 64bit windows.   Since I work in the industrial sector we have a lot of special function windows software that just doesn't run on modern windows operating systems.   YOu can't really assume that Windows will run legacy software, in most cases it will not.

So you really need to look at what is actively supported software.   If the software you want to use is on the Apple platform you are golden.   If not; you need to determine if alternative software is available or emulation will work.   
When I bought the MacBook I didn't know that some software was not supported. I had to look for replacements (other similar applications). I also couldn’t even understand how to change your macbook name, I finally found the information https://setapp.com/how-to/change-your-macbook-name here. In general, I had a lot of problems. But in the end, I was still very happy with the purchase of the M1 MacBook. Now I’m already thinking about updating, M3.
By the way there is no "BEST" software.    That can lead to making poor platform choices.   Instead consider what your needs are and if the platform in question supports those needs.

That's for sure, you need to look at the supported applications before purchasing.