A pint for x-86 -->
Apple Mac sales break records amid ex-86-odus to Arm-compatible M1 silicon
Apple is hauling in the cash as Mac users escape Intel x86 processors and upgrade to Cupertino's homegrown Arm-compatible M1 chips in record numbers. For the first quarter of its fiscal 2022 – the three months to December 25 – Apple reported [PDF] revenue of $123.9 billion, up 11 per cent year-over-year. Cupertino made $34.6 …
COMMENTS
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Friday 28th January 2022 08:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
To late to edit the above (I read a lot slower without coffee - they're fixing that most critical of office machines right now), but this is precisely what I referred to: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/28/intel_spectre_lawsuit/..
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Friday 28th January 2022 08:59 GMT Chz
Never been a fan of the Apple ecosystem or OSX, but even I have to admit the M1-based machines are pretty damned nice. Especially after Macbook development seemed to have hit a pothole the past few years, looking a bit sad next to an XPS. So good on them, and it's going to be a really difficult decision between the Spectre and Macbook I'm being offered at the corporate refresh. (Specs wise, the Macbook is all over it. But then I'd have to get used to OSX again after 10+ years away, and I'm not sure it's worth the bother.)
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Friday 28th January 2022 15:02 GMT ZeroPete
Aspentech, Smartplant, ProDok, EpCon, not to mention an endless array of vendor specific calculation tools, DCS and PLC programming tools, the list is endless.
Somehow people that use Macs seem to think software is limited to a spradsheet, a wordprocessor, a presentation tool and software for lawyers and doctors that charge 1500 USD an hour in a crappy US tv show. And watching porn
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Saturday 29th January 2022 14:08 GMT Dave 126
Re: Gaming
Apple has never pursued the Mac gaming market with full conviction, and for good reasons. A gamer currently can choose between a PC gaming rig, a gaming laptop, or a console. A rig can be constantly upgraded, a gaming laptop tends to have a lower resolution screen than those favoured by photo / video editors, and a console can be left plugged into a big TV.
Gamers choose machines and components based on numbers, benchmarks, specs and price.
Plenty of Mac owners do play video games, they just do so on a PlayStation.
Video games and video gamers are often associated with negative stories in the media (see Doom, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto etc etc). Gamers have been negatively stereotyped in the media. Fairly or unfairly, Apple doesn't want to be associated with those stereotypes. (And vice versa! Gamers take pride in the research they have to do just to get the damned game to work. IT careers have been built upon the skills gained as a young 'un building a machine on a tight budget. War stories of having to reinstall a MS C++ Runtime Thingy after spending 5 hours thinking was a funny driver...)
That's all history. It might change in future. Now Apple's Macs now use the same GPU family as their iOS machine, as well as the same graphics API Metal. iOS is a popular platform for 'casual' games, I.e, no gamepad, often puzzle or strategy instead of action. Does that translate? Unclear. GPUs now powerful enough for 3D games on 4k displays. No game developer can ignore the possibility of Apple's AR VR efforts becoming a major platform in a few years time, so experience with Metal could be valuable.
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Tuesday 1st February 2022 10:18 GMT arthoss
Re: Gaming
The future is now old man. You obviously know little of the Apple TV gaming and the cross-hardware play you can have there with Apple Arcade (play the game on Mac, move on to iPad, and finish on Apple TV). Better done than any other gaming system. There are few heavy weight games though but there are some really good ones already (Oceanhorn, Catquest 2, Sasquatch, Agent Intercept).
Gamepads from xbox and PS are supported but they also have their own standard (I have two appleTV gamepads and they work quite nicely).
Why I play Apple TV more often than Xbox or PS? It's super easy to use, compared to the rest. Xbox is quite annoying with the relogin prompts.
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Friday 28th January 2022 13:43 GMT Chz
As a University, we have plenty of Macs around. I just don't see those things in reality. My associates and students manage to crash, bog down to useless speeds, and get malware on Macs just as effectively as they do on Windows. If you're talking about clued in users, then it's the same story except none of the above happen to Windows or Mac users.
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Friday 28th January 2022 12:29 GMT mark l 2
Re: Shopify is upgrading its global workforce to MacBook Pro and MacBook Air
I am not surprised Shopify have the money to splash out on giving all their workforce brand new Macbooks. My sister used their platform to host her business online shop for a couple of years and everything you do on Shopify they want money for. Even basic functions that are included by default on other ecommerce platforms you have to buy add-ons for and pay a monthly subscription to use on Shopify stores.
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Friday 28th January 2022 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Shopify is upgrading its global workforce to MacBook Pro and MacBook Air
Apple desktops and laptops are only expensive until you are honest about TCO and add staff costs to it. Once you look at the savings in man hours on not having to wait for mid-work reboots, patching and updates you will find that Macs are actually significantly cheaper - and that's even before you look at the cost of risk exposure to boot. That's why private banks switched - they know numbers.
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Monday 31st January 2022 17:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Shopify is upgrading its global workforce to MacBook Pro and MacBook Air
Not a Windows user then?
I even had engineers in who had their diagnostic laptops start updating in the middle of fixing a problem for us. You could say that their IT people sucked (which I could agree with for different reasons), but still. Not having any upfront warning, nor having any means to stop it from happening until the work is ready - honestly, if that idea gets to cars I do not want to be on the road.
Even if it's fairly easy to recognise Teslas.
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Friday 28th January 2022 10:36 GMT AceGrace
I've got an M1 MacBook Pro 13" for the living room, an M1 Mac Mini on my desk beside my windows machine and also the new 16" Macbook M1 Pro under my desk.
I've been a windows PC user for most of my working life and use it for most work things but I must admit I do like Mac OS. :-)
Anything I build that is cross platform, I always do on the Mac.
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Friday 28th January 2022 10:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Considering the design of software and hardware as one system is not without it's disadvantages, that is for sure. I was staggered by the performance of Reason x86 running on an M1. A native release does now exist though I haven't upgraded. Performance in the emulated mode is basically in line with running the same program on a decent Ryzen desktop.
My main headache with apple is the lack of options for aftermarket customisation. Is it that much to ask to have a system with few PCI-E slots, NVMe etc? Irritating to see the MacBook use a proprietary NVMe form factor. Is it really worth that much more to Apple to reduce the lifespan of the equipment by this type of shortsightedness? RAM expansion obviously not an option, but usually an inevitable upgrade demand too. How M1 will translate to desktop form factor and where folks want high GB's, if not TB+ RAM as an option is a large unknown. I'm quietly hoping that ARM's presence in the server board market means that capability will exist.
With ARM apparently up for grabs again, but "out of reach" to existing big chip outfits (if nVidia isn't allowed to buy it, neither AMD or Intel should be either) there isn't an obvious progression route for anyone. Apple taking control of it's own destiny is, if nothing else, different to what anyone else is doing in the interdependency web.
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Friday 28th January 2022 10:56 GMT Fred Daggy
Extensibility is a reasonable criticism of Apple kit. Walled garden is another. But, geez, it just works. 10 year old macbook JUST fell out of Operating System support, but it still works! Beat myself up all day on the work laptop with Windows 10, it's a pleasure to jump to the Mac for study.
Wasn't sure about the M1 chip, so I purchased an Intel iMac last year. I needed it, but damn, wish I could have waited.
Data point of 1 person, others probably have different experiences. Patches that just work. Patches that don't force themselves on me at inconvenient times or cause me to lose work. An operating system that gets the truck out of my way to get things done. Visually pleasant experience - I can see where different programs are without having to guess! Usable systems even with the lowest specification.
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Friday 28th January 2022 13:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
You just hit on the reason why people suspect an announcement of something like an M2 chip. The M1 appears to be limited to 16GB RAM which is still about more than double as MacOS needs to handle basic office work, but for some applications that is simply not enough.
I have a feeling there will be some chassis coming out soon for just that, but the M1 simply had to happen first as a proof of concept, and from my perspective it's been impressive (if not 100% due to my need to run x86 virtualisation which is harder on the M1).
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Friday 28th January 2022 13:39 GMT gnasher729
M1 is not one chip, it's a whole family: M1, M1-Pro, and M1-Pro Max. They have 8/16, 16/32 and 32/64 GB RAM. When M2 arrives, it will be a few percent faster, and there will be an M2-Pro and m2-Pro Max, likely a bit later.
One interesting bit is that if you don't have enough RAM, swapping with a drive that runs at 7GB / second makes it very much unnoticeable. So lots of people with 8GB and a super fast SSD are quite happy, who wouldn't like 8GB and a spinning drive or a 500MB/sec SSD drive at all.
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Friday 28th January 2022 20:03 GMT Synonymous Howard
Macbooks memory
M1 comes with 8 or 16GB RAM
M1 Pro comes with 16 or 32GB RAM
M1 Max comes with 32 or 64GB RAM
The real-world testing I have seen shows that the difference between 16 and 32GB is subtle and probably not worth the extra.
I would normally go for more RAM over disk space to reduce chance of swapping/thrashing but in this case I chose the later on the new MacBook Pro based on the testing I saw and I have not been disappointed. Video editing, compiling, massive spreadsheets, photo mangling all work a treat.
Also got 10% discount at a local dealer for Black Friday.
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Friday 28th January 2022 20:26 GMT Kevin McMurtrie
Re: Macbooks memory
Some work always needs more RAM. In addition, the usable amount of RAM in MacOS may be +/- several GB of what's expected.
MacOS uses compressed memory and it's tuned to not swap out idle processes. For some uses that's a big win. For others, the compressed memory buffer and idle apps are a big chunk of permanently missing RAM. My work 32 GB MacBook Pro begins performing poorly when a task needs 26GB RAM. If it needs 30GB, it's barely making progress.
64 GB or Linux on the laptop would be a huge timesaver.
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Friday 28th January 2022 17:31 GMT DS999
There is plenty of DRAM headroom for the Mac Pro
Apple isn't using LPDDR5 modules even close to the size current tech and the standard allows for. If they used the densest Samsung says it can make and I assume Micron as well (they aren't on the official price lists, but if you are Apple you get the parts you ask for if they can make them) they could have fit 512 GB into the Macbook Pro. In a Mac Pro that will have four M1 Max style SoCs that would allow for up to 2 TB. Down the road with denser DRAMs that will increase to 8 TB, which should be enough for anyone :) I'm sure the second generation Macbook Pro will be offered with more than 64GB, they are just trying to serve 98% of customers with the first cut M1 based stuff.
Now I'm not sure they will offer them with that much right away, or necessarily ever, rumor has it the first ARM Mac Pro will have only two M1 Max SoCs so you'll probably have to wait for its bigger brother in 2023 if you really need terabyte level DRAM. The M1 itself may have restrictions in the amount of DRAM it can address, Apple made changes between the A14 (which the M1 was based on) core and the A15 core to greatly increase the amount of DRAM it can address. Don't remember the specifics, but it is like 16x more, so again it might be trying to serve 98% of customers and worrying about the outlier/halo people in the 2.0 iteration.
I wouldn't be shocked if the Mac Pro doesn't have ANY PCIe slots though. They are already on the record not supporting third party GPUs, so x8 or x16 slots would seem to be pointless. The performance of their integrated GPU (thanks to that very fast/wide LPDDR5) is good enough that only the absolute most expensive cards from AMD/Nvidia will be able to top it (and that assumes the M2 version doesn't give it enough of a boost to match even those)
The only thing you'd be using PCIe x4 slots for would be external drives/arrays or faster networking, but they might figure USB/TB covers that, especially if USB4/TB5 is ready by the time the "big" Mac Pro ships next year which allow up to 80 Gbps.
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Friday 28th January 2022 10:47 GMT Slx
Meanwhile over in iPad land
We’ll just doggedly stick to a policy of using a mobile phone OS, with huge icons, on what is effectively a powerful, high spec convertible Mac and we will continue to scratch our heads wondering why sales are slumping, while telling end users they just don’t understand what they really want.
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Saturday 29th January 2022 12:32 GMT Jason Hindle
Re: Meanwhile over in iPad land
I think this is potentially Apple’s greatest miscalculation. That very clear separation between PC and tablet that Microsoft and Google have successfully blurred. I can see this taking a couple of years if Apple needs to do an about face. They stuck an M1 and 16GB in an iPad but won’t let you run OSX (either virtualised or side by side). The power on the top end iPad Pros looks wasted.
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Monday 31st January 2022 11:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Meanwhile over in iPad land
I've always thought that about iPads, up to now, there's just being no justification for the expense of the 12.9'' iPad over the regular iPad, as the software just doesn't stack up to the quality of the hardware.
iPadOS is good for a consumption 9.7''-10.2'' tablet, and that's about it.
Adobe ARM native software may eventually change that, but it's still early days.
Also, hate the 2 different pens, for different models, that's another reason for not switching up, though both look the same in a drawer, which is where they inevitably end up, for all the people I've asked about their use of the pen.
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Saturday 29th January 2022 14:28 GMT Dave 126
Re: Meanwhile over in iPad land
Another reason iPad sales have declined is that everyone who wants one has one already. As a user, I'd rather use eg Photoshop that has been tailored for iOS UI than try and use a Mac OS version on a touchscreen. Apple would rather sell me an iPad *and* a Mac than just one machine. I dare say you are correct that their policy might cost Apple some iPad sales. However, it likely gain them Mac sales at a greater margin. Net benefit. Their balance sheet suggests they are good at this sort calculation.
And as usual, it's Adobe being a bit slow, just as they were in supporting high res monitors on Windows Photoshop years after even Microsoft realised that 1920 x 1200 wasn't enough for everybody.
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Friday 28th January 2022 10:50 GMT karlkarl
Whilst it does seem very wasteful, it has been quite nice to be inundated with a bunch of cheap second hand Macs, all at the perfect age to run *BSD and Linux. Weirdly I still find them ugly compared to an understated black Thinkpad but I suppose that is personal choice.
I am also glad that Apple isn't buying up all the Intel chips (effectively to put into landfill the next year) so that is doing well to reduce the cost of other laptop chips.
So all in all, I have no interest in Apples products but there are some real benefits of them moving away to their own vendor specific ARM chip.
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Saturday 29th January 2022 19:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
did they say that these are better than sliced bread yet can't run Linux?
I could acquire an M1-borne Apple laptop to run Linux on it just for sake of geek value of running Linux on ARM, if those laptops would just allow run native Linux on them , which they don't.
Hence I'll continue resorting to cheaper Apple-lookalike PC x86 laptops.
Thanks anyway to Apple for kicking Intel's butt that will hopefully motivate them make faster and less power-hungry CPUs in future.
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Sunday 30th January 2022 13:47 GMT elbisivni
Re: did they say that these are better than sliced bread yet can't run Linux?
The boot loader on all M1 macs is open and unlocked, Apple does not prevent booting of unsigned or custom kernels in any way. They may not go out of their way to help projects to do this, but they’re also not stopping them.
Asahi Linux is one such project. It isn’t complete yet. Ubuntu recently introduced Mulitpass, allowing you to fire up a Linux vm on the shiny Apple-ness.
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Friday 28th January 2022 12:36 GMT Oh Matron!
I don't understand the draw of windows....
Have been a Mac user for 10 years and I do not want, nor intend, for this to be a windows vs mac post.
HOWEVER: Python development.
On a mac, update pip, python and pip3. Install a library or two. Copy python file. Run.
On windows..... Well, let's just say that even an empty python file with just a simple "hello mum" won't run. Something about this that or the other not found. Sigh.
With windows in the cloud, I think the argument of "application availability" is dead. But why do Microsoft make things so damned difficult?
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Friday 28th January 2022 12:54 GMT karlkarl
Re: I don't understand the draw of windows....
Potentially a culture thing. Windows users would find it strange to run pip or use any sort of package manager to obtain the software.
Instead they would google "Python download", grab the setup.exe (probably ActiveState Python) and run it, installing in an ad-hoc manner. Then just hope that it correctly sets the PATH env variables.
Personally, I don't really like package managers, but I also really don't like ad-hoc installer .exes. Just a (compiled) tarball would suffice for me ;)
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Friday 28th January 2022 20:04 GMT doublelayer
Re: I don't understand the draw of windows....
I don't understand what problem you encounter.
On Windows, Python isn't installed by default. So if you want it, you install it. You can go to python.org and download the installer. Or you can type "python3" at the command line and they will open the Windows store page for it. I suggest the former, but either works. Then scripts run. Pip runs (it's installed at the same time unless you change the settings). Virtual envs run. So, is your complaint just that Windows doesn't come with Python installed by default?
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Friday 28th January 2022 13:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Bigger question
Huh?
Keynote, LibreOffice, Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher, FInal Cut Pro, Motion, Firefox, Vivaldi, SimpleMind, Step Two, AirParrot, Reflector, VLC - all available as compiled directly for the M1.
Heck, there's even Microsoft Office for it, so I don't quite get the question.
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Friday 28th January 2022 17:35 GMT DS999
Re: Bigger question
Is there something in particular you are waiting for, which is currently available/supported for the Mac on x86, but not yet available for M1? And where Rosetta 2 doesn't work for some reason but is performance critical enough that the rather modest difference in native/Rosetta 2 performance is important?
Or are you just trolling?
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Friday 28th January 2022 16:56 GMT Marty McFly
Count me in...eventually
Don't be a fanboi fool! Wait for the M2 or M3 to come out. Sure the M1 is the top dog right now, but Apple has done this before. The first generation comes out, it is great, they finish the product on the second generation, then the first generation is quickly dropped from compatibility with newer OS releases & features.
For reference, may I provide my first iPad 64GB, Wifi+Cell - the biggest & most expensive one when the iPad released in 2010. iOS 5.x released in 2011 was the final OS supported. Compare that to my iPad Air 2 from 2014 which is still being supported with current operating system releases.
Yeah, I will get an Apple ARM chip once they have a couple revisions under their belt. I won't get burned again on first-gen Apple hardware.
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Friday 28th January 2022 19:38 GMT gnasher729
Re: Count me in...eventually
Blimey, so your iPad is 12 years old and not supported with new updates anymore... Is it still working? Does it have a 64 bit processor? Since I'm writing iOS software, what do you think are your chances of convincing me to support a 32 bit processor?
And you are calling it a "first generation" product. Well, there was the A4, then the A5, then the A6, then the A7 (that's the first 64 bit processor), then the A8, then the A9, then the A10, then the A11, then the A12, then the A13, and then the M1 - renamed because they stick it into Macs.
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Friday 28th January 2022 21:08 GMT doublelayer
Re: Count me in...eventually
Would it hurt you too badly to read what they said?
"Blimey, so your iPad is 12 years old and not supported with new updates anymore..."
They weren't complaining that their 2010 product wasn't updated in 2022. They were complaining that their 2010 product was out of updates by 2012. That's very different.
"And you are calling it a "first generation" product. Well, there was the A4, then the A5, then the A6, then the A7 (that's the first 64 bit processor), then the A8, then the A9, then the A10, then the A11, then the A12, then the A13, and then the M1 - renamed because they stick it into Macs."
And the one they were talking about is the A4 model, so it really was the first generation of iPad there was. Since Macs with M1 are a big change, they're predicting similar things for the M1 Macs as the A4 iPads.
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Saturday 29th January 2022 14:42 GMT Dave 126
Re: Count me in...eventually
@McFly
You refer to the history of Apple releasing theor first entrants to a product category, such as their first mobile phone or their first iOS tablet computer. A new category of device.
With the M1 we are talking about Apple transferring an established component ( an SoC tried and tested over years and millions of phones) into a different product category that Apple also has a lot of experience with. No new category of device.
Is your advice based on the rule of thumb 'never buy a MK I of anything'? Are these M1 Macs new devices? Is this still my broom, I've changed the gead three times and the handle twice?
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Saturday 29th January 2022 22:59 GMT doublelayer
Re: Count me in...eventually
I think their attitude is supported by history. When Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel processors, they had a similar situation. The first range to use Intel chips had support lifetimes shorter than the models that followed. Some of those were due to using 32-bit processors which didn't stay in the range for long, but some ones just stopped supporting OS X releases at 10.6 without that excuse. The ranges that followed got 10.7 at least, and those that had enough memory by default usually got to run many more versions after the original release. This, too, is just switching a component in an otherwise similar product, except that the component concerned is a really important one and requires a lot of effort to switch correctly. They ran the Intel-to-ARM transition very well, and they could easily subvert the expectations, but those things aren't necessarily connected and they have sometimes chosen not to in similar situations.
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Saturday 29th January 2022 01:50 GMT RichardEM
designing a naval craft
I have been trying to find an application that will allow me to design naval craft I have Ideas that I would like to produce for an alternative fiction book but all that I can find work only on windows. please help. send an e-mail to personal@meyeroff-c-c.com.
Thank you in advance.
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Monday 31st January 2022 09:31 GMT Grunchy
Apple is earning $384 million profit each day?! Off of Macintosh?!
I do have an iPhone (2016 SE model, still working) but I chafe under the restrictions. The stupid thing positively hounds me for money every single photo I take, because I accidentally activated iCloud which has now filled up. But I have no idea how to pull data off iCloud onto the HDD so I can shut off the noise. There’s absolutely zero chance I’d ever buy an Apple computer, the iOS is built on a Ransomware foundation.
No Thank You!
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Tuesday 1st February 2022 21:12 GMT doublelayer
"I accidentally activated iCloud which has now filled up. But I have no idea how to pull data off iCloud onto the HDD so I can shut off the noise."
You could use the magic tech support system (XKCD), but this time, I'll tell you the answer.
1. Settings -> Photos -> iCloud Photo Library, switch to on (probably already on). This syncs your photos down to your phone.
2. Still in there, turn it off. Now it stops syncing.
3. Settings -> iCloud -> Photo library -> Delete. This clears the photos from the iCloud storage.
"the iOS is built on a Ransomware foundation."
Because you turned on a feature that you have to pay for? It wasn't on before you did that. You have your data, you have the choice not to pay, you have the choice not to hear about the service. Hyperbole doesn't help arguments.