0:00Hey it's Tim here, I just wanted to do a
0:01very brief video covering Apple Silicon
0:04support for Tableau.
0:05Essentially a while back I did a video
0:07about this and it kind of worked and I just
0:09wanted to do a
0:09bit of an update because a few people have
0:11asked me on Twitter whether they should buy
0:13some of the
0:13new M1 based Macs to work with Tableau. So
0:16I'm just going to do a very brief video, it
0:18's not
0:18going to take long I'll be pretty honest
0:20with you, it's still not an ideal solution.
0:22Okay so here I
0:23am, you can see that I'm in macOS Monterey,
0:26I've got a brand new MacBook Pro, I've got
0:28one of the
0:29new ones, the M1 Macs based one with 32GB
0:31of RAM, basically a sort of a mid-level
0:34tier spec. I got
0:36it because obviously I edit videos so I
0:38went for a slightly specced up version but
0:40it's got 16GB of
0:41RAM, sorry it's got 32GB of RAM not 16GB
0:45and it's got a 1TB hard drive. So it's very
0:49comparable to
0:49what I had before, essentially before this
0:52I had another MacBook Pro 32GB of RAM, it
0:54had the base
0:55sort of level GPU and the reason I got that
0:57is because I do a lot of different things,
0:59of course
0:59I work in analytics but I also do a lot of
1:01video editing and creative work outside of
1:03that as well.
1:04And so what I will say a little later on is
1:06that I think it's always a good idea to get
1:0832GB of RAM
1:10if you're on a Mac and you're trying to
1:11work in analytics, I'll explain why in a
1:13second. But you
1:14can see my spec here, now you can also see
1:16here that I'm in Tableau 21.3.3, this is
1:19the latest
1:20build of Tableau and so the simplest case
1:23here is that I've just done a very simple
1:26vanilla install
1:27of Tableau here, I've just done the default
1:29install and typically if you did the
1:30default install
1:31one of the things you'd get is a driver for
1:34Microsoft SQL Server and I think another
1:36driver
1:36for Postgres, I'm never sure which two it
1:38is but there's two standard, I think it's
1:39Oracle or
1:40Postgres, one of those two comes as part of
1:42the default installation. Now what's
1:44interesting is
1:45I've actually run this installer multiple
1:47times and if I go ahead and just try and
1:48connect to one
1:49of the most standard databases here you'll
1:52see that it asks me for the driver and I've
1:54actually
1:54run this installer multiple times and this
1:56is actually a bit of a sticking point. Now
1:58there's
1:58a couple workarounds to this, I have been
2:00able to get this to work but it's kind of f
2:02iddly and it's
2:03not supported, Tableau is not officially
2:05supporting this so it's not ideal. If
2:07however you install
2:08Parallels on your M1 base Mac or your Apple
2:11Silicon Mac and then on that version of Par
2:14allels
2:15you run an ARM version, ARM version of
2:17Windows 11 and then you install Tableau on
2:20that. For some
2:22bizarre reason the emulation seems to sort
2:24of work out fine so here I am, I've
2:26switched over,
2:27you can see I've got the exact same version
2:2921.3 64-bit, this time a Windows install of
2:32the same
2:33thing and if I go ahead and I just switch
2:35over to the data connections here you can
2:37see that I'm
2:38actually already connected to the SQL
2:39Server and I've played around with this, I
2:41've done some basic
2:42work and it works and so I'm able to
2:43connect to the data. Now what I'm not
2:45saying here is that
2:46this is supported and it's going to work
2:48fine and you should build stuff off it, all
2:50I'm saying is
2:51that it's still quite early days for this
2:53technology and so this is sort of the work
2:55you
2:55have to do if you want to use one of these
2:57machines and still do your daily work, you
2:59have
3:00to invest some time figuring out what doesn
3:02't work and what doesn't work and that's not
3:04ideal because
3:05you should really just be able to get on
3:06and do your work, you don't want to have to
3:08spend time
3:08sort of just quickly doing some analysis
3:10only to find you've hit a bug. A couple of
3:12other bugs I
3:13found if I go over to this one, if you try
3:15and do activation via Tableau Online or
3:18Tableau Server,
3:19it doesn't quite work on the M1 based
3:20version here but it does work completely
3:22fine on the Windows
3:24based version. Another detail is it also
3:26depends on the version, for example when I
3:28try that license
3:29based activation on a version from 2020 it
3:32doesn't work at all, when I try it on 2021.
3:353 it works
3:36completely fine, I tried it in 2021.1 it
3:39didn't quite work and I just didn't sort of
3:41do any sort
3:41of scientific test to see exactly which
3:43versions work and which ones don't and so
3:45you're probably
3:46wondering well what is supported and what
3:48isn't supported? Well the short answer is
3:50none of it's
3:50supported, if you go over to the Tableau
3:52community forum there's actually a really
3:54good post here,
3:55I'll put this in the description below as
3:57well so you can go directly to it in the
3:59links and there's
3:59an update here from David Brown from Table
4:01au essentially covering that look as of June
4:032021
4:05this hasn't been updated I don't believe
4:07since, it's not officially supported so
4:09there are things
4:10that are going to work, that's absolutely
4:12the case you can run it, install it, it
4:14runs on Rosetta
4:15absolutely fine but you are going to hit
4:17bugs and those bugs are not supported,
4:19Tableau's not going
4:20to go out their way to fix them until they
4:22officially either compile a version that
4:25works
4:25on Amble silicon natively or I assume they
4:28do enough sort of coding and work to this
4:32version
4:32that it runs fine under Rosetta, quite a
4:34few applications have actually done this,
4:36if you look
4:36at some of the Adobe apps those run
4:38absolutely fine under Rosetta because Adobe
4:40have done the
4:41work to make sure that it's going to work
4:43fine under Rosetta but in other cases other
4:45applications
4:45just flat out don't support Apple silicon
4:47so if you're thinking of getting an Apple
4:49silicon Mac
4:50be super careful if you're going to be
4:52using this Mac as a daily driver for your
4:54work and you just
4:55need to get stuff done I'd recommend you
4:57hold on to the laptop you've got you
4:58probably don't want
4:59to buy a new Intel based Mac at all but you
5:02're also probably itching to buy something
5:05new and
5:05maybe hold out for that so just hold out a
5:07little bit more, Tableau's not really said
5:10when they're
5:10committing to update this I hope it's soon
5:12I hope it's by this time next year because
5:14by then the
5:15Apple silicon transition will have been
5:17complete and Apple should only be really
5:19selling Macs with
5:21Apple silicon in them only so I'm hoping
5:23that Tableau's sort of matching that pace
5:25with
5:25development. The other sticking point is
5:28that of course the Mac OS versions also
5:30change every year
5:31so with Big Sur then Catalina and now Mont
5:33erey there's always a few bugs that sort of
5:35sneak in
5:36as Apple changes the base level systems as
5:38well so it's always a sort of cat and mouse
5:40game to get a
5:40stable version of Tableau sometimes and
5:43even if you had an Intel based Mac you'll
5:44still come across
5:45a few bugs in the latest release so bugs
5:47aren't sort of going to always disappear
5:49they're never
5:50going to be perfect but you kind of have to
5:51work within the realms of what you know
5:53works so
5:54if you're prepared to do some testing and
5:56you've got a very narrow use case for this
5:57maybe you're
5:58just doing exploration this is going to be
6:00great. I will also say that this doesn't
6:02stop you from
6:02going on and using WebEdit you can of
6:04course use WebEdit to just connect to
6:06something on server or
6:07Tableau online and just get working so that
6:09's something you should consider. Now the
6:12other
6:12thing I wanted to touch on is if you're
6:13going to buy one of these Apple silicon Mac
6:15s what should
6:16you get well my recommendation is to get a
6:1932 gigabyte machine of RAM now 16 gigabytes
6:23used to
6:23be the staple for most laptops and it still
6:25is in most businesses now the problem you
6:28're getting is
6:28that a lot of these new machines a lot of
6:30new operating systems work on the
6:32assumption that RAM
6:34is now relatively cheap and therefore it
6:36should be in general available and abundant
6:39in machines and
6:40so you're seeing a couple of new trends
6:42happen you're seeing SSDs get faster and
6:44you're seeing
6:45RAM get faster even something like Windows
6:4811 is optimized to use a new type of RAM
6:51called DDR5 and
6:52so you get into this world where RAM and
6:55hard drive space are getting quite
6:57accessible and so
6:58when developers build applications they're
7:00increasing the amount of resources they
7:02need.
7:03So if I give you a simple example let's say
7:05you get a 16 gigabyte machine okay the base
7:07OS
7:08typically takes five to eight gig of RAM so
7:10that's already half of your RAM gone if you
7:13're
7:13sort of using it heavily if you open up
7:15Chrome maybe let's say you've got six tabs
7:17that's maybe
7:18another gig to two gigs gone okay so you
7:20started with let's say eight now you're on
7:2210 gig of RAM
7:23you've only got six left as soon as you
7:25open up Parallels to emulate Windows a lot
7:27of that is
7:28going to go maybe you use up 4 gig leaving
7:30only with 2 gig of RAM left and then if you
7:32've got
7:33anything else open maybe it's Excel maybe
7:35you've got a database running any other
7:37piece of work
7:37going on it's going to use up that RAM
7:39really quickly and what you don't want to
7:41do is get in
7:41this situation where your computer is
7:43having to do something where it's swapping
7:45information from the
7:46memory to the SSD. Now on Apple Silicon
7:49this actually happens incredibly fast it's
7:52it's
7:52actually silly the SSD speeds on Apple
7:54Silicon machine are just incredible so you
7:57might not even
7:58notice that this is happening if you do get
8:0016 gig of RAM but you will get much better
8:03performance
8:03if you have more RAM than you have you know
8:06SSD space being used by swap so my
8:08recommendation is
8:09to get the 30 gig of RAM it sounds a lot it
8:12sounds like you're kind of pushing the
8:14boundaries but if
8:15you can get hold of it that's definitely
8:17the spec to go for in terms of everything
8:19else you can just
8:20get an M1 Pro essentially you don't have to
8:22worry too much about the M1 Max. M1 Max is
8:24really only
8:25for video creators and people doing high
8:27intense creative work where the GPU cores
8:30are really
8:31useful analytics doesn't tend to use a lot
8:33of the GPU cores and the M1 Max have a
8:36neural engine for
8:37some of the machine learning based activity
8:39so if people are writing software that's
8:41optimized for
8:42that that should be using that side of the
8:44chip in the long run so really you only
8:46need an M1 Pro
8:48and you could probably get the base level M
8:501 Pro that will be completely fine but make
8:52sure you get
8:5330 gig of RAM get a decent hard drive 512
8:56is the absolute minimum one terabyte is my
8:59recommendation
8:59again so you can have a lot of applications
9:01on your machine but 512 is probably what
9:03you'll get
9:03for work that's totally fine if you install
9:05like 10 applications that you use every
9:07single day
9:08and you'll have plenty of space left over
9:10to do your day-to-day work okay and that's
9:12pretty much
9:12it so yeah I just wanted to do this simple
9:14update on Apple Silicon M1s just for anyone
9:17who's sort of
9:17thinking of getting into these super
9:19excited about technology and they use Table
9:21au just hold out if
9:22you want to use this as your daily driver
9:24or if you do be sure that you spend a bit
9:26of time
9:26investing in making sure you have a setup
9:28that works the other thing to bear in mind
9:30is if you
9:30get this for work and your computers are
9:33fairly locked down every time you come
9:35across a bug
9:35you're going to have to be on the phone to
9:37it support and they're not going to like
9:38that so
9:38they might not even let you get this
9:40machine in the first place so just a few
9:42things to think
9:43about and that's pretty much it for me
9:44thanks for watching and I'll catch you in
9:46the next video let
9:46me know what else you'd like to see on an M
9:491 chip from an analytics perspective I've
9:51been able to
9:52get SQL Server to work in Parallels I've
9:54installed a few other things like Docker as
9:56well so if
9:56you've got an idea something you'd like to
9:58run on Apple Silicon that you use with
9:59Tableau let me know
10:00in the comments and I'll go ahead install
10:02it and see what works and I'll try and
10:04reply to your
10:04comment as soon as I can. Thanks for
10:06watching see you in the next one.
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