[HN Gopher] Apple unveils the new MacBook Pro featuring the M3 f...
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Apple unveils the new MacBook Pro featuring the M3 family of chips
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 165 points
Date : 2023-10-31 00:30 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| tough wrote:
| meh
| mattkevan wrote:
| Less space than a Nomad?
| nikolay wrote:
| The first in tech - skipping a generation in performance
| comparisons! M3 being always compared to M1, not M2!
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| They had comparisons to both.
| veber-alex wrote:
| And Intel CPUs
| kube-system wrote:
| Not just Intel CPUs -- old Intel CPUs in old discontinued
| MacBooks.
| p_j_w wrote:
| People with those Macs and the M1 are the most likely to be
| considering an upgrade.
| basisword wrote:
| This makes sense to me. Very few people are upgrading the M2
| laptops they bought earlier this year. I'm finally in the
| market to move from Intel because visionPro dev requires
| Apple Silicon. Also - last Intel laptops were less than 4
| years ago. Even as a power user I only upgrade every 3-5
| years - regular users even less.
| cheeze wrote:
| I noticed that... Kind of weird. But guessing for marketing
| copy, "60% faster!" is an easier sell than 18% or whatnot.
| p33p wrote:
| I figure it's part marketing and also part targeting the
| individuals most likely to upgrade. With an M2 I'm far less
| likely to pull the trigger.
| mjsweet wrote:
| Apple is trying to get people to upgrade from the M1 family,
| not people who have recently bought a laptop with an M2 chip.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| I think they are targeting us M1 Pro upgraders. M2 Pro/Max
| wasn't necessary, then AI hit, and now they had a perfect
| message for a perfect customer
| tiltowait wrote:
| They compared to both in all the charts I saw. I expect most
| people with any interest in upgrading are on M1 or lower, so it
| makes sense from that POV.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| This is either to make the performance improvement bigger or to
| target user with m1 because they know most of their users are
| still using m1? (Me included with M1 pro and M1 max)
|
| The perf difference though is still impressive compared to m2.
| It is bigger than the m2 > m1 upgrade
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| it is to target intel hold-outs.
|
| this year's model is this many percentage points faster than
| the first chance they had to ditch the intel mac, and the
| mental math for converting whatever they internalized to
| decide to hold out to a comparison against the m3 should be
| easy.
|
| some early adopters will salivate, some will pull the
| trigger, but the holdouts should be near their breaking
| points. the fear of shipping dates slipping due to early
| adopters with fomo will drive holdouts further towards the
| cliff.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I feel like it's Apple realizing (I mean they likely already
| knew it, but this is sorta publicly saying it) that people are
| not going to upgrade their Mac's every year like many do for
| iPhones. Or likely even every 2 years.
|
| So I think the focus on Intel and M1 (but still showing M2 but
| just not saying it out loud) was the right call.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if when the M4 roles around we are
| still hearing about M1, but maybe they drop intel by that
| point.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Virtually no-one upgrades their phone every year. For the US
| you're looking at about 2-10% depending on which poll you
| believe.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Even 2% I would not call "virtually no one". 232 million
| iPhones were sold in 2022, 2% of that is still 4 million
| iPhones.
|
| However looking at another survey of specifically iPhone
| users I see as high as 36%.
|
| Going further, of those that upgrade every year how many of
| those are getting the highest pro models?
|
| Or are subscribed to Apple iPhone Upgrade Program. Even if
| they are a lower portion of the population they are a
| consistent and important part of the population.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Apple's been doing this for a while. Hardly a first.
|
| Charitably, its more realistic. Not many people upgrading from
| M2 to M3.
| MisterBiggs wrote:
| Also comparing it to an intel based macbook instead of intels
| newest offering
| rsynnott wrote:
| Both, and also some to the old Intel machines. This is probably
| more relevant for actual purchasers; approximately no-one would
| be going from M2 to M3.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| I believe the whole event contained 0 actual camera footage.
| Everyone on screen, down to Tim Cook, was an animated prop.
| salil999 wrote:
| The event ended saying the entire event was shot on iPhone and
| edited on a Mac.
| schott12521 wrote:
| I was sitting here thinking to myself, "There's no way its that
| dark in Cupertino right now??"
|
| I guess they never said it was a live-streamed presentation..
| minimaxir wrote:
| Prerecorded presentations are prerecorded.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| These events have not been live-streamed in like three years.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| First thing I noticed since I'm sitting here in Mountain View
| looking at a nice sunset just above the horizon (or
| specifically, the Santa Cruz mountains), so nope, not close
| to dark yet. Maybe another hour.
| netcraft wrote:
| Its just so strange to me that they can release some of the most
| powerful and efficient hardware we have ever seen, and show it
| off by telling us we can now (checks notes...) check off tasks in
| a widget on our desktop.
| fassssst wrote:
| Yes the very first Mac OS feature mentioned was "now you can
| quickly see the weather."
| duxup wrote:
| They really shouldn't mention the weather until they fix that
| app. That app is so inexplicably bad, it feels like an
| intern's summer project.
| nforgerit wrote:
| > They really shouldn't mention the weather until they fix
| that app.
|
| After your edit: What a pity! I thought to have just read a
| great one-liner about the climate crisis and how tech
| people want to solve everything applying tech.
| jwestbury wrote:
| My biggest pet peeve: Apple has decided to convey low/high
| temperatures different than standard. Every major weather
| agency and app advertises the daily low as the low
| temperature during the night following the advertised high.
| Apple, on the other hand, advertises the lowest temperature
| during that calendar day.
|
| This is a small but crucial difference. If I want to know
| the coldest temperature it will reach _tonight_ , I need to
| look at the hourly forecast, because it's quite possibly
| that the low for today will be for 1am this morning (the
| past) whilst the low for tomorrow will be 11pm tomorrow,
| without an advertised daily low for _tonight_.
| duxup wrote:
| That app is like a series of contradictions.
|
| At times it seems very averse to tell me about perception
| on the main screen ... EXCEPT the notifications where it
| sends me double notifications about rain, snow, whatever
| all the time, and it's right maybe 15% of the time,
| maybe.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Don't forget it can also play Myst.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| myst with ray tracing is just upgraded crysis.
|
| no one intends to play it.
|
| that it can be played is the important part.
| truncate wrote:
| and watch Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| After several minutes of scientific computing, 3D rendering,
| game development, movie production, and Xcode, among others.
| dmix wrote:
| They showed music production in Logic / Protools about 50% of
| the human scenes too, which can be demanding.
| burntcaramel wrote:
| Looks like it's raining outside, time to fire up the three AAA
| games available on this thing.
| MikusR wrote:
| Macs are great to run Geforce Now.
| balls187 wrote:
| And Xbox Cloud
| oblio wrote:
| But then... why would you need a Mac? Any PC can do.
| MikusR wrote:
| Good screen, silent, long battery.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Apple's lack of serious long-term dedication to 3D gaming is
| such a self-own that makes their 3D gaming benchmarks feel
| weak & thin.
|
| I'm hopeful the Game Porting Toolkit + advances in this years
| macOS (Gaming Mode, better support with MoltenVK and SPIRV-
| Cross, etc) start a publishing shift toward macOS as a target
| platform, but I can absolutely see Apple taking their foot
| off the gaming gas pedal again.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think it's great computing hardware has finally met the
| threshold to run emacs as it was intended.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Did you miss the opening video?
| skydhash wrote:
| I was just reading something related to that (can't remember
| the text) but the gist was that improvement in hardware do not
| follows software as they try to limit the control that the user
| has over that hardware.
|
| My own impressions after 4 years with apple devices is that
| there is no expert mode on the Mac. It, and the iPhone and the
| iPad, are computing appliances, something you use to get work
| done. They either work for you, or they don't. The mac is more
| flexible than the others, but the whole ecosystem is trending
| towards making your workflows fitting the tools, not the tools
| fitting to the workflow.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So exactly how does the _Mac_ keep you from running software
| you want to run?
| skydhash wrote:
| - Notarization
|
| - Opaque apps
|
| - Locked down hardware
|
| - SIP,...
|
| You can go and find a solution for most of the shackles,
| but then you're likely to break down the whole system as it
| was not designed to be that way. The mac is fragile in
| terms of customizability. It's not that it's preventing
| running software, it's that it may break down if you do!
| (not that the others are better, but at least they're
| trying to be more resilient).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You can bypass notarization easily and SIP. By opaque
| apps you mean everything is not open source? What do you
| want to be able to do "unsolder the memory from the
| chip"?
| skydhash wrote:
| Transparent apps for me means configurable up to the
| option of deleting them and replacing it for someone
| else. Instead of the tight coupling we have now in MacOS,
| I'd like to have federated applications bound by
| protocols instead of needing to update the whole system
| to add a single feature or fix a bug. I don't think you
| can delete stock apps without disabling SIP or something.
|
| I don't need to unsolder the chips, or do anything
| hardware wise, but I'd like to be able to use the
| hardware without the OS if needs be. That's why I say
| it's an appliance. It makes sense in terms of business,
| but it's not like the user is free to use the device how
| he wants.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What the heck are you talking about? What types of apps
| do you think you can't find alternatives for on the Mac?
|
| And why wouldn't you want SIP by default? This is what
| can happen when you disable SIP.
|
| https://community.gigperformer.com/t/be-careful-if-you-
| use-a...
|
| This was a known issue that Google later on fixed.
|
| Do you run your Linux box using root?
| skydhash wrote:
| > What the heck are you talking about? What types of apps
| do you think you can't find alternatives for on the Mac?
|
| It's not about finding alternatives. I did for a lot of
| mac's default. It's about replacing the default option.
| On Ubuntu, you can remove the default login screen and
| use KDE's panel alongside the i3 window manager. Because
| they're not tightly coupled together. Imagine if you
| could have replace the MacOs top bar, because it is a
| program that just answers to some IPC protocol? Or the
| window manager would expose windows and their placements
| so you could script a layout without the accessibility
| workaround.
|
| > And why wouldn't you want SIP by default?
|
| I want it, which is why it's not disabled on my
| computers. But I'd like to set my own snapshot of what I
| meant to preserve instead of Apple's.
|
| > Do you run your Linux box using root?
|
| I don't but I'm always a real sudoer and I have the
| capability to do `su root` anytime.
|
| As I've said, it's about expert mode, not something on by
| default, but that can be and the system has been built to
| support it.
| thejazzman wrote:
| With no disrespect to you, what you desire is literally
| the antithesis of Apple
|
| Steve loved talking about the intersection of humanities
| with technology. I think he'd proudly agree Apple
| computers are meant to be appliances
| skydhash wrote:
| It's more like something that would be nice to have
| because experts will always wants to build tools that
| will fit them, not just take something off the shelf.
| It's like the kindle reader which are perfectly fine for
| reading books, but some people want the perfect
| experience (according to them). So they will jailbreak it
| and install koreader which is the expert mode of reading
| ebooks.
|
| I like Apple's hardware. And I use the software. But it's
| always a convenience for me, not something that fits how
| my mind would like to use it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| With no disrespect to Steve, we might have to settle on a
| better standard of computation than one that was designed
| to reinforce a trillion-dollar business model.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Again why would you ever trust a third party for your
| login screen?
|
| You can script window layout with Applescript or
| JavaScript. You've literally been able to do that since
| the 90a.
|
| If you had the programming chops, there is nothing
| stopping you from replacing the menu bar.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > Imagine if you could have replace the MacOs top bar,
| because it is a program that just answers to some IPC
| protocol?
|
| That is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things. I grew
| out of that tinkering phase after I was a student running
| Gentoo for a few years. Eventually most of us just need
| to get shit done. The default top bar is fine. It works.
| Virtually no one gives a f*** about replacing that. You
| are in the 0.0000001% and Apple will never cater to that.
| You can install Asahi Linux on Mac and play with the
| login screen there.
| tarsinge wrote:
| If you want to spend your time being productive/in the zone
| that's what you want. Your workflows are in the music or
| movie production or graphic/3D app, etc... Macs always were
| about running apps and doing all your work there.
|
| It's like the difference between having a car for mechanics
| projects and racing vs actually needing to go from A to B
| reliably when you need it.
| kibibu wrote:
| Finally, the promise of Active Desktop might be realized.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Where is the DirectX 12 conversion?
| spullara wrote:
| I get why they are calling out vs M1/Intel as this is primarily
| targeted at getting folks to upgrade but it is kind of annoying
| that they aren't emphasizing the incremental vs the last
| generation. Also, the callout to AI developers to get an ok GPU
| but with 128 GB of unified RAM is pretty smart.
| smith7018 wrote:
| Agreed, though they at least put M2 comps on screen in most of
| the places they did the M1 comps.
| nextos wrote:
| Will these M3 chips be competitive against cheap Nvidia cards
| for _training_ small and medium sized networks?
|
| M2 weren't, and Metal support on Torch was sketchy. Getting
| better lately, though.
| spullara wrote:
| For training you want the best NVIDIA card you can afford.
| Doesn't make much sense to use a laptop for training IMHO.
| There is an argument that the M3 Max is the best non-
| datacenter chip for inference with the ability to scale to
| 128 GB of memory.
| nextos wrote:
| Sure, I am thinking a bit ahead. That is, a Mac Mini /
| Studio / Pro with a M3 Max / Ultra _could_ be interesting.
| p33p wrote:
| M3 is absolutely impressive, but the event overall was... short?
| Uneventful? Underwhelming?
| minimaxir wrote:
| It went as expected given the weird event timing + no in-person
| showoff.
|
| Oddly no gaming demos which people expected.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Yeah, I was hoping for Mother Nature S01E02
| fassssst wrote:
| meh, they need to do something with the industrial design or OS.
| Feels like they made a big bang with M1 and then kind of
| stagnated.
| smith7018 wrote:
| If we're to believe them, the new M3 Max is "up to 11x faster"
| than the maxed out 2019 16" Pro. That doesn't seem like they
| stagnated.
| sixothree wrote:
| Didn't they intentionally gimp the thermals on those machines
| though?
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| What do you expect? A 2x improvement in performance every year?
| There are limits to physics that would hit pretty quickly at
| that rate.
| fassssst wrote:
| Something like a better screen, wireless, camera, weight
| reduction, ports, gaming initiative, I don't know, something
| more exciting than just a spec bump.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| They did give the MacBook Pros better screens and a better
| 1080p camera. It's also way better at gaming with the
| improved performance. What ports do you want them to add?
| amelius wrote:
| > Basecalling for DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW is up
| to 20x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to
| 36 percent faster than the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro.
|
| What does the average consumer know about basecalling?
|
| I mean, they are still selling just consumer electronics.
| Scientists and industry use Linux and Windows, and speed isn't
| the main reason.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Ironically a parallel comment laments they showed off checking
| the weather. Can't win if you're apple!
| kllrnohj wrote:
| There's an entire industry of consumer products that take
| massive amounts of compute called "gaming". Apple could have
| showed off the chips performance at that.
|
| Or at least something like photo or video editing?
| popey wrote:
| The advert at the start seemed more targetted to creatives, not
| 'average' consumers - whatever they are.
|
| Also, are 'average' consumers watching this kind of marketing?
| I suspect not, only enthusiast nerds like us are?
| alwillis wrote:
| > I mean, they are still selling just consumer electronics.
| Scientists and industry use Linux and Windows
|
| Anyone who's worked at a research university knows Macs are
| popular among professors, researchers and students. These folks
| also start companies and work in industry and they generally
| don't switch platforms unless it's absolutely necessary.
| ytpete wrote:
| A lot of marketing is aspirational though. People want what the
| pros use. If it's their top hobby or they aspire to becoming
| one of those pros... then they want the best, no limits if they
| can afford it. Even if many of those buyers realistically never
| will hit those limits.
|
| I suspect that impulse sells a lot of MBPs, DSLRs back in the
| day, Photoshop licenses, sports cars, high end ski gear, etc.
| etc.
| rvz wrote:
| As expected, this aged perfectly well for the M3 3 year
| prediction [0] and the competition is already left in the dust
| before they tried catching up towards the M1.
|
| Now that Apple Silicon has stabilized for software support, it
| looks like a great upgrade from those stuck on Intel laptops
| since 2020 or below.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25549796
| goosedragons wrote:
| Not really? Qualcomm just showed off benchmarks beating M2 and
| all we have to go off is Apple's dubious relative graphs that
| have been essentially lies before (3090). We will see how they
| really stack up when both are in shipping products.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| As I said before, let's see a product first running Windows,
| with native software and a decent x86 emulator.
| goosedragons wrote:
| ??
|
| It already exists? You can buy ARM Windows devices right
| now. I'm typing this on one. The x86/x64 emulator is pretty
| good but performance is limited by the slower CPUs.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm referring to a Windows ARM chip using the latest
| Qualcomm chip that is suppose to be so good.
|
| All indications are that the Windows x86 emulator has
| relatively bad performance.
| goosedragons wrote:
| We can already use the Windows x86/x64 emulator. Unless
| you have specifics that Snapdragon X Elite performs worse
| under it than current chips we can expect about 60% the
| performance. Rosetta 2 is about 75%. Based on Qualcomm's
| Geekbench 6 numbers it'll have about the same x86/x64
| performance as the M1.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| "Liquid Retina XDR display" I'm thinking ol' Steve wouldn't have
| liked this branding direction.
| toddmorey wrote:
| mixed metaphors here
| gizajob wrote:
| Maybe they'll soon up the resolution and have a Quadra XDR
| Display
| andy_xor_andrew wrote:
| Don't forget the MagSafe(TM) port, Force Touch(TM) trackpad,
| and Magic Keyboard(TM) with Touch ID(TM).
|
| (though tbh this is not a new thing from Apple, they did this
| even back when Jobs was around...)
| SushiHippie wrote:
| They only compare it to the M1, does anyone know how the M3 would
| compare to the M2?
| askonomm wrote:
| If you watched the video then you'd have seen most of the
| slides also featuring M2 comparisons. Though, not very
| impressive changes. Not enough for me to upgrade at least.
| dmix wrote:
| I heard mini-LED might be announced this time, but I guess not?
| cr__ wrote:
| They've had mini LED displays since the M1 MacBook Pro.
| emkoemko wrote:
| is this why m2 mackbook pro has such terrible pixel response
| times? swiping work spaces becomes a blurry mess, not seen
| displays this bad since we moved from CRT to LCD
| dmix wrote:
| Ah I misread the Macrumours article.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Going to be looking for outside validation of that Max GPU
| performance before making a buy decision, I think. Biggest hopes
| for this generation were dramatically better GPU performance--and
| Apple says they've got it--but we'll have to see how that
| actually pans out.
|
| I was also hoping for a fourth USB4/TB4 port, which doesn't seem
| to be coming. Oh well.
| jjcm wrote:
| From a marketing/product positioning perspective, I liked that
| Apple was focusing on performance per watt as their main selling
| metric. Yes it's fast and you can likely advertise on that alone,
| but the per-watt performance is just leagues ahead of everyone
| else, especially with them being the first to release with TSMC's
| 3nm fab.
|
| The 22hr advertised battery life is definitely a side effect of
| this. I'm super curious how long it ends up lasting in real-world
| tests.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Today, we saw independent benchmarks of Qualcomm's new 4nm chip
| that provided 50% (Geekbench) to 100% (Cinebench) more
| multicore performance than M2, while using 23W. And it can
| efficiently encode AV1. Maybe M4 will catch up.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Well, benchmarks are nice. But a processor is not an end user
| product. How do you think this is going to be as a product
| once you put it in a PC running Windows - especially as
| Microsoft struggles trying to get third party apps on ARM and
| MS's own substandard x86 emulator
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| I had a Thinkpad X13s for a while that worked quite well
| except for a video issue (used pawn shop purchases are a
| risk like that). Firefox, Edge, and MS Office worked great
| natively on ARM. LibreOffice worked just fine via the MS
| x86 emulator. And the X13s had the old Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3
| with less than half the performance. Granted, I wasn't
| doing any heavy lifting with it the month I had it.
|
| I mainly got it to test out my PortableApps.com stuff
| running under ARM. I'm doing it now on a Macbook Air M1
| with Windows 11 running under UTM.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The entire value proposition of Windows is wide array of
| application support for every little niche app you could
| possibly want.
|
| You just named a few apps that are on Macs.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| I got it to handle 3 things: a laptop I can use as a
| laptop for basic stuff and to use to remote in to my
| development desktop at home, a Windows ARM machine I can
| test my Windows x86/x64/ARM64 software on, and a Mac to
| test out my software running under macOS via Wineskin.
| It's a little clunky but it works for all 3.
|
| My original set was a regular full-fat Windows laptop, a
| super-cheap used Galaxy Book Go Gen1, and a used Intel
| Mac Mini. I later replaced the Windows laptops with the
| Thinkpad 13s. If it hadn't had video issues, I'd still be
| using that. But a used base model Macbook Air M1 serves
| the purpose for now.
|
| I'll likely switch back to an Apple Silicon Mac Mini and
| a Windows laptop of some sort later as I much prefer a
| Windows laptop to my current Macbook.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I don't use Windows. The Raspberry Pi has great Linux
| support, and the Linux Geekbench scores were even higher
| than in Windows. Unfortunately, I couldn't find Linux
| Geekbench scores in the 23W configuration.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| To a first approximation - no one cares about how well a
| Qualcomm desktop chip runs Linux. The consumer market is
| Windows and Macs
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Linux is 10% of desktop/laptop share and even higher of
| laptop share, given that very few people use ChromeOS on
| desktops.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Just a quick Google search shows 3%.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| My previous comment explains why you interpreted your
| Google search incorrectly. ChromeOS is Linux.
| https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/03/07/windows-losing-
| market-...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This also shows the power of marketing. ChromeOS is a
| _subset_ of Linux -- it doesn 't do anything you couldn't
| always have done with Ubuntu. But for years people said
| that normal people don't want Linux, it doesn't run their
| apps, they can't use it.
|
| One company shows up with a marketing budget and it's got
| triple the market share and is now up to the level that
| Mac traditionally held when all of the things "nobody
| makes for Linux" because "nobody uses it" supported that.
|
| We're also at the point where things like bank websites
| don't "officially" support Linux, but as a general rule
| they don't have any problems on it, and if they did have
| problems it would be a problem the bank has to deal with
| instead of a problem the customer has to deal with.
| ralfn wrote:
| The consumer market is Windows ecosystem.
|
| Without the ecosystem who wants Windows? And what will it
| do for reputation of the vendor or Microsoft when people
| can't run their apps.
|
| People are already buying non Apple ARM laptops. They are
| called Chromebooks. They can run Linux apps and Android
| apps. And thats more than most consumers would expect.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Chromebooks are basically the hardware equivalent of a
| SaaS product where the user is not the buyer. Schools are
| buying Chromebooks for students.
| ralfn wrote:
| Most people I know have some kind of chromebook (next to
| MacBook for work). They bought them in stores.
|
| Is this a US thing where your school buys you a laptop?
| filoleg wrote:
| > Is this a US thing where your school buys you a laptop?
|
| It is a thing that is essentially an equivalent of an
| employer-provided work laptop, but for students and
| provided by their school.
| taylodl wrote:
| Many schools in the US provide their students with
| laptops and Chromebook is the overwhelming favorite. The
| student has to return the laptop at the end of the year.
| As an anecdote, I know of no one who bought a Chromebook
| for personal use. My friends, colleagues and
| acquaintances are buying Macs or Windows machines if they
| want a laptop, iPads or Android tablets if they just want
| a tablet.
|
| In a way, Google's strategy of getting Chromebooks into
| schools may have backfired as they're largely seen as
| kids' computers.
| smcleod wrote:
| I've never even seen a Chromebook in real life here in
| Australia. I'm sure they must exist but I've never heard
| of anyone using one.
| rnk wrote:
| They are in use by the millions in schools. I have one
| and I really like, can run android apps, chrome web
| browser, and in the crostini linux system I can run any
| apps, dev tools, web browsers, emacs, and it is native. I
| like it better than raw linux because of the built in
| android support.
|
| I gave chromeos laptops to my family because they aren't
| trustworthy. Now they have reliable laptops and don't get
| virus infections or os problems.
| smcleod wrote:
| Yeah ok interesting! Makes sense for the Linux parts -
| not sure I'd trust Google with my family's data but that
| doesn't mean they're not useful.
| ralfn wrote:
| I can not fathom the level of incompetence by vendors to
| want to install Windows on ARM devices.
|
| 1. The only reason you make people deal with Windows is
| backwards compatibility.
|
| 2. When you advertise it as a Windows laptop people will
| expect to be able to run their apps (they expect backwards
| compatibility). RIP your reputation and support inbox.
|
| Yes, it will be harder to sell when it runs Linux. But it's
| the correct expectations management and at least it will
| suck less.
|
| Oh well. This is what Google will do with their
| Chromebooks. Windows on ARM has the same future as the
| Windows Phone.
| shawnz wrote:
| Have you tried x86 emulation on Windows for ARM? It works
| just fine for me.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's slower and one of the main things people want
| Windows to run is games. Also, games are one of the
| things emulation systems are most likely to break,
| because games use all kinds of weird performance hacks
| and come with heinous anti-cheat systems.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Are these Qualcomm chips in products shipping next month?
| huytersd wrote:
| It's like different parts of the TSMC factory are in
| competition with each other. What a surreal situation.
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| TSMC doesn't care. It's like an arms dealer, it will
| happily sell to both sides.
| fh9302 wrote:
| What you didn't mention is that the Snapdragon X Elite has 12
| high performance cores, making it a M2 Max competitor and not
| an M2 competitor, at least on the CPU side. The GPU is
| disappointing with no ray tracing support.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The M2 Max has a TDP of 79 W. I gave the Snapdragon's
| results at 23 W. The 80 W configuration scored even higher.
|
| Where did you see that there was no ray tracing support?
| Qualcomm introduced hardware accelerated ray tracing in the
| previous generation.
| bananapub wrote:
| I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that Qualcomm's
| pre-production benchmarks are of no value and the actual
| performance of real devices will be worse than Apple.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| That's quite a limb to be standing on if you expect
| performance to decrease by half.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| To be fair, I don't think many would have trusted that
| Apple's M1 chips were going to be as good as they were
| before they were actually in consumers hands. I'll
| reserve judgement too until that's the case.
| brokencode wrote:
| That'd be pretty incredible if it plays out in reality once
| products are released. Though it sounds too good to be true.
|
| I'm skeptical since Qualcomm has failed for years to catch up
| to Apple processors in the smartphone market. So why would
| their first effort in desktop processors be so much better?
| SekstiNi wrote:
| There's actually a good reason. In short, a large portion
| of the apple silicon team ended up leaving a few years ago
| to could start a new company named Nuvia. Their goal was to
| produce high performance chips for the enterprise/server
| market, and they had some very aggressive performance
| targets [1].
|
| Then, in early 2021 Qualcomm ended up acquiring Nuvia, and
| these new chips are the first showings of this acquisition.
| Naturally there's a lot of hype since said team represents
| a lot of the talent that made apple silicon so good in the
| first place.
|
| [1]: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15967/N2.png
| brokencode wrote:
| Apple Silicon was great because Apple had invested huge
| amounts of resources for a decade on smartphone
| processors first, not because they had some kind of
| geniuses on the project.
|
| It is no doubt promising that Qualcomm has brought in
| more talent, but it still takes time and effort to turn
| that into a best-in-class product. I'm not saying it's
| impossible, though I'll be skeptical of the hype until I
| see a real product.
| ASinclair wrote:
| > Apple Silicon was great because Apple had invested huge
| amounts of resources for a decade on smartphone
| processors first
|
| Doesn't that also describe what Qualcomm has been doing?
| brokencode wrote:
| Sure, but they've been behind the whole time. It's not
| like they've been trading blows each generation with
| Apple.
|
| If the premise is that Qualcomm hired a team of super
| talented engineers who can build a product that competes
| with Apple, then those engineers will still need time to
| develop a product.
|
| Again, maybe their new processors will be everything they
| claim. It's possible for this to happen. I'm just not
| willing to buy into the hype yet.
| SekstiNi wrote:
| > Apple Silicon was great because Apple had invested huge
| amounts of resources for a decade on smartphone
| processors first, not because they had some kind of
| geniuses on the project.
|
| Given that they were confident enough to leave and start
| their own company, I'm not sure this is true. Indeed I
| wouldn't discount the value of high talent density.
|
| > I'll be skeptical of the hype until I see a real
| product.
|
| They have shown real hardware demos [1] to reviewers
| already, and the numbers look solid. Obviously there are
| no comparisons vs M3 yet, but it seems promising.
|
| [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-
| snapdragon-x-e...
| brokencode wrote:
| That Anandtech article was full of caveats about how the
| benchmarks are not typical and about how comparisons are
| not easy at this point.
|
| Again, it seems promising, but we'll find out a lot more
| once a product is actually released that can be fully
| benchmarked and reviewed.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Is the assumption here Apple has developed a business
| process for building best-in-class CPUs while treating
| its engineering workforce as fungible commodities? If so
| they've succeeded in doing what Intel has been trying to
| do for decades.
| crest wrote:
| Not one or two Geniuses, but a really good team. They
| lost supposedly key members of that team which threw them
| off track. An organisation can recover from this, but it
| takes time and money. Not everyone likes to work under
| Apple-like working conditions towards Apple's goals.
| whynotminot wrote:
| > Apple Silicon was great because Apple had invested huge
| amounts of resources for a decade on smartphone
| processors first, not because they had some kind of
| geniuses on the project.
|
| Right, and the guys who learned all the hard-won lessons
| along the way walked out the door to start a company,
| bringing along expert knowledge of Apple's designs and
| processes. And then Qualcomm bought them.
|
| So on a surface level it seems implausible that QC could
| produce such a chip. But when you zoom out and go "oh,
| Qualcomm effectively bought Apple's senior chip
| engineers" it starts to make more sense.
|
| It would be like if Qualcomm's top modem engineers
| started a company, which Apple bought. And then a couple
| years later Apple's long-running modem project
| mysteriously turned a corner and was ready to launch an
| exceptional modem. Like yeah, no kidding.
|
| So yes, we need to see independent benchmarks and make
| sure it's not hype. But it's not so unbelievable that
| Apple's former top engineers could also produce a good a
| chip for another company. There's nothing magical about
| the Apple office--it's the engineers.
| brokencode wrote:
| Engineering something as complex as a CPU is a long
| process regardless of how smart and experienced your
| engineers are. I mean, you can certainly speed it up with
| great talent, but there is still long and hard work to do
| with any difficult engineering challenge.
|
| I'm not saying there's something special about Apple
| other than the scale of their investment over a long
| period of time.
|
| It's the same deal for Qualcomm and their 5G modems.
| Apple no doubt has hired many talented engineers to make
| a custom 5G modem. But Qualcomm's modem is still the best
| one around. It's hard to catch up because Qualcomm has
| been investing heavily in that space for a very long
| time.
|
| Again, that's not to say Apple won't ever catch up. Just
| that I wouldn't expect that their first effort will be
| better than Qualcomm's modems.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Nuvia has been working on this tech for years before
| being snapped up by Qualcomm. And before that, those same
| engineers had worked on Apple silicon for years. Why do
| you keep thinking this is an overnight thing?
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've been able to use my M2 Max MacBook Pro for 12
| hours straight with 50% battery at the end of the day. Nothing
| intensive, just Chrome, Emacs, Spotify, Slack, Discord, etc.
| powershot275 wrote:
| Nothing intensive, just Chrome, Emacs, Chrome, Chrome,
| Chrome, etc.
| hbn wrote:
| Google Chrome Helper (Renderer), Google Chrome Helper
| (Renderer), Google Chrome Helper, Google Chrome Helper
| (GPU), Google Chrome Helper (Renderer)...
| whynotminot wrote:
| Lol spot on. It's actually a bigger flex than you might
| think to be getting that much battery life with all that
| Chrome running.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| My M1 Pro can do damn near two workdays on one charge as long
| as I'm not doing shit in Docker.
|
| The Lenovo Thinkpad I was also issued loses like 40% of its
| charge overnight, while "sleeping"....
| yanokwa wrote:
| Try OrbStack. Should be much better on battery life.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. On Colima now, will give that a try
| when I get a chance.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Is this on very low brightness?
|
| My 14" M1 Pro rarely got more than 7 hours and my former
| work 16" M1 Pro more than 9 on a React workflow. When
| introducing VM work or anything fairly heavy to the mix
| take 2 hours off each. Typically at 50-60% brightness, have
| iStat showing load so I can catch any errant processes.
|
| My biggest issue with this release is no published
| improvements in battery life. 22 hrs is for movie watching.
| Wireless web - of course very low load - is still 15 for
| the 16" and 12 for the 14", same as M2 Pro which is each
| just 1 hour more than the M1 Pro.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| I almost never touch the brightness. It does what it
| wants. Not sure. Looks like it's at about 1/3 right now,
| but it'd be brighter if it weren't kinda cloudy here, I
| bet.
|
| Program choices matter a lot. I gained about 30% battery
| life switching from Chrome to Safari, years back. I do
| have Teams and MS Outlook running all the time on that
| machine though, and they're not exactly slim.
| jchw wrote:
| Historically, though, focusing on performance per watt is a
| technique that hardware companies use to distract from
| otherwise not very impressive concrete performance
| improvements. You'd expect a new process node and chip shrink
| to bring modest performance per watt improvements even with
| largely identical designs. When it comes to GPUs, this has been
| combined with actually increasing the power draw to make the
| generational performance improvement look more impressive; so
| technically, performance per watt would improve, but the
| footprint would still increase, and yet the performance
| improvement would still be rather lackluster for any given
| price bracket. (This especially because you're competing with
| last generation's current street prices and used prices: if I
| can get a used M2 machine that's competitive in performance to
| a new M3 machine in the same price bracket, it might be more
| worthwhile.)
|
| That's not to say there's no value in focusing on energy
| efficiency, especially for laptop chips; Apple Silicon was
| leagues ahead in energy efficiency when it launched, even if
| the gap is a lot smaller with newer Ryzen mobile chipsets. And
| speaking of Ryzen, the 5950X is a paragon of performance-per-
| watt in a desktop chip, which is of course still just as great
| as it makes it easier to power, cool and overclock. It's more
| to say that a shift toward focusing on energy efficiency could
| signal that they may be hitting road blocks in unlocking
| substantial performance improvements through better chip design
| alone, which of course makes sense, as its not like you can
| just linearly come up with design improvements every year
| forever, and they already came out swinging with their first
| generation chips.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The other point here is that "performance per watt" is how
| you get "performance" when single-thread performance is hard,
| because it lets you fit more cores into the same TDP. The top
| end EPYC 9754 that will stomp basically anything has a 360W
| TDP but that's for 128 cores, which is less than 3W/core.
|
| The trouble for Apple is that although you can do this,
| they're paying the highest bid for first access to TSMC's new
| process, and doubling the core count would have used that
| much more die area. Which might have delayed the release as
| it takes more time to build up stock. So now we're into this
| weirdness where they give you a 22 hour battery life (how
| often are people awake for that many hours straight?) but
| they're getting outperformed by the Ryzen 7000 HX line on the
| older generation process node because it has more cores.
| goosedragons wrote:
| And it still only does 1 external monitor on base M3...
|
| A $1600 laptop that can only use a single monitor. Wild.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| yeah it is indefensible to me at this point that the base chips
| are still limited to one external display.
|
| I was willing to cut them some slack with the original M1 chip,
| thinking there _might_ be a decent technical reason for it with
| their first generation of laptop /desktop chips, but three
| years later it is absurd
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it is indefensible to me at this point that the base chips
| are still limited to one external display_
|
| They're the base chip for a reason. Why would you add a
| feature a small fraction of that chip's users would use when
| you can use that space for something else?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Why would you add a feature a small fraction of that
| chip's users would use when you can use that space for
| something else?
|
| Because it is a basic feature! I am not asking for the moon
| here, I have no idea why the idea that a laptop should
| support more than one external monitor is controversial on
| this site.
| paulcole wrote:
| It's not complicated.
|
| If you benefit enough from the 2nd external monitor then you
| can easily afford and justify the upgrade.
|
| If you'd just _like_ the 2nd external monitor then go nuts and
| spend your money on the upgrade. Or don't and buy a different
| laptop.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| I agree that it isn't complicated, for completely different
| reasons though.
|
| Supporting multiple external monitors is such a basic
| feature, it is _absurd_ that apple insists on using it to
| differentiate products.
|
| it's akin to making me shell out $400 extra dollars if I want
| the laptop to have a trackpad, or if I want both the left and
| right halves of the screen to work
| paulcole wrote:
| It's not akin to that at all. A laptop has one screen. You
| may _like_ having 2 extra monitors but to call it a basic
| feature is clearly wrong.
|
| It's a basic feature _to you_. To Apple, for whatever
| reason, it's a _premium_ feature.
|
| You'd probably be better off with a different laptop if
| you're looking for a budget option that meets your needs.
| goosedragons wrote:
| It is a basic feature. I dare you to find a single laptop
| not made by Apple with an MSRP of $1000+ that only does a
| single external monitor that's currently sold. If all
| your competitors have it, it's table stakes.
|
| Sure SOME people can tolerate it or are dumb enough to
| reward Apple for it, but it doesn't make a basic feature
| premium.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If all your competitors have it, it 's table stakes_
|
| If all you do is tail the competition. Most laptop users
| don't use a second monitor. This is a silly gripe.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Presumably most people using two external monitors close
| the laptop lid?
| paulcole wrote:
| What does that have to do with anything lol
| jwestbury wrote:
| Quite a lot. A laptop screen + external monitor is an
| awkward solution. Display size and pixel density issues
| make it annoying to navigate the combined desktop
| environment. I have very little interest in doing so,
| personally -- if I'm using an external monitor, I'm
| generally never using my laptop screen.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| You still can't use a second external monitor if you
| close the laptop screen on a base M1/M2/M3. So that's why
| they're asking how is it relevant here.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Right my point was that wanting to connect two monitors
| isn't some niche thing like laptop screen + 2 monitors
| which indeed would be more niche
| goosedragons wrote:
| It's a $1600 laptop. It's sort of excusable on a $400 one.
| Not $1600 or even $700. Should $2000 be the bar for 2
| external monitors? The OLD 2016 13" $1500 could do 2 external
| monitors. The 2020 Intel i3 MBA which was $999 could do two.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Should $2000 be the bar for 2 external monitors
|
| For Apple laptops the bar is whatever Apple decides it is.
|
| > The 2020 Intel i3 MBA which was $999 could do two
|
| Neat! Buy one of those.
| oblio wrote:
| I have a honest question for people like you:
|
| Do you get a buzz for defending the $2tn mega-corp? Why
| do you do it? What's the point?
| paulcole wrote:
| Yes but to be fair I'm quite stupid.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| From your own logic it sounds like Apple decided the bar
| was $999.
| paulcole wrote:
| bars are movable
| Xiol32 wrote:
| My 2015 MBP could do two external monitors.
| rchaud wrote:
| If it doesn't include an overpriced dongle accessory, is it
| really an Apple product?
|
| Actually it would, my decade old MBP 13 has 3(!) ports for
| video out.
| MikusR wrote:
| No dongle will help with only one native external monitor.
| butlike wrote:
| 2019 Intel MBP has no native external monitor support. It's
| dongle hell all the way down.
| MikusR wrote:
| It has native support for 4 external thunderbolt
| displays.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| But at least it can use a dongle to utilize 2 or more
| external monitors. The point is the base M1/M2/M3 cannot
| use 2 external monitors. At all. No matter how many
| dongles you buy.
| salil999 wrote:
| Whatever opinions I have against Apple I just cannot deny their
| ability to not only innovate but also deliver every year. I
| wonder just how far into the future they're working on stuff
| internally at the company. Well done to this company.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's like they can do nothing wrong. Everything seems so
| meticulously worked out and competent. Nothing good can last
| forever. Wonder how many more good years Apple has left.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Spend some time using Siri and you might change your mind.
| jwestbury wrote:
| Here's a Web result for "change your mind."
| pschuegr wrote:
| Their hardware org is amazing. The software org, decidedly
| less so.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Cool, the M2 should go on sale soon then!
| for1nner wrote:
| Unfortunately this appears to be a drop-in replacement - can't
| click "buy" on any of the M2 MBPs if you can even get to the
| model page.
| walterbell wrote:
| Retailers still have M2 MBPs..
| nanook wrote:
| 22 hour battery life.. Fuck me!
| mjsweet wrote:
| Right at the end at the beginning of the credits it said it was
| shot on an iPhone 15 Pro and edited on a Mac. I think it might
| have been an MBP M3 Max... flashed by so fast. It's fascinating
| that it was shot entirely on a phone.
| kmlx wrote:
| here's the PR video on how they made that happen:
|
| https://youtu.be/V3dbG9pAi8I?si=XqzYSZVpegOFMDTN
| mjsweet wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. At the end of that video is this
| tidbit of information:
|
| Shot on iPhone Edited on Mac
|
| Additional pro software and hardware used. Special thanks to
| Blackmagic Design and Beastgrip.
| t0lo wrote:
| The thin gradient text they used is out of step with most modern
| advertising, and even their own, I wonder what kind of
| advertising/design philosophy they're trying to push
| robertwt7 wrote:
| I wonder what fps is baldur gate's 3 playing on m3, m3 pro and m3
| max
|
| A lot of users are reporting not consistent 30fps on m1 even
| after larian studio worked with apple eng to port BG3 to mac
| smileybarry wrote:
| To be honest, Act 3 has ridiculous frame drops on a _dedicated_
| GPU. Act 2 is also heavy but Baldur's Gate (the town) is just
| very graphically heavy for some reason. I wouldn't be surprised
| if it's just that same performance issue.
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| 256gb of ram coming up! Wonder how this will affect nvidia with
| machine learning practitioners having so much unified ram for the
| gpu to work with.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I'm surprised there's still no pro chip for the iMac, and I guess
| at this point we should assume there never will be. It's a shame.
| Give me a 27" M3 Pro with target display mode, and I'd be awfully
| tempted.
|
| As it is, there's nothing (other than that new color) that tempts
| me to update from my 16" M1 Pro, but I didn't expect there to be.
| I suspect I won't be eyeing upgrades until at least M5 and more
| realistically M6.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| that, and the missing 27" iMac, seemed to very keenly indicate
| that if you want more power or more pixels, Apple will push you
| to buy a Mini + a Studio Display.
| wmf wrote:
| Mac mini + Studio Display. It's expensive but I don't know that
| an iMac Pro would be any cheaper.
| alwillis wrote:
| > I'm surprised there's still no pro chip for the iMac, and I
| guess at this point we should assume there never will be.
|
| I wouldn't assume that. It's likely there will be a 32-inch
| iMac next year running on the M3 Pro or M3 Max.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Per the benchmarks, the M3 family of chips is 15% faster than the
| M2 family of chips.
|
| That doesn't seem as much of a performance gain as expected given
| the move from 5nm to 3nm.
| luag wrote:
| > Better for the Environment
|
| I wonder if with Apple's new support for repairability has
| translated to them making their new laptops more repair friendly.
|
| That would certainly be much better for the environment.
| clamprecht wrote:
| It's weird they mentioned something about how you can do 8K video
| editing with Premier Pro, but didn't mention Final Cut Pro X. Are
| they killing FCPX?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| nah they just ported it to iPads, no way they are killing it
| skrrtww wrote:
| Bit disappointed that they're still using the same mini LED
| displays. After the iPhone announce, I was looking forward to
| proper OLED with 1600 nit peak for the MacBook Pros.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with my 16" Max display, but
| the dimming zones are quite visible, especially with poorly
| brightness-mastered content (some of which is on Apple TV+!).
|
| I can't watch the whole event, but the continued complete lack of
| marketing toward gamers I must say is also a bit disappointing.
| You have these fancy GPUs, Apple; go for the jugular!
| smith7018 wrote:
| It's especially annoying that they announced ray tracing
| support but didn't show a real title using it. I wonder what
| happened internally because I'm sure they were working with
| partners to get it working... I mean, RE Village launched today
| on iOS and macOS and would've been a great demo for graphics
| and to boost sales.
| AprilArcus wrote:
| OLED image retention makes them a bad match for desktop
| operating systems that have a lot of static elements like menu
| bars, docs, task bars, etc.
| rsynnott wrote:
| An OLED would actively put me off buying it for now, I think.
| Laptop screens are expected to keep operating a very long time;
| it seems likely that burn-in would shorten the product lifetime
| a lot.
|
| My current personal laptop is a 2016 13" Pro, and it's
| basically _fine_. People keep laptops for quite a long time
| now; I don't think OLED is there on durability.
| alberth wrote:
| Switching display tech is a massive ordeal for Apple.
|
| Because a huge point of pride for Apple is that regardless of
| the Apple device you are using, color accuracy & picture are
| the same and matched across devices (between iPhone / iPad/
| Studio Display / MacBooks).
| drooopy wrote:
| The base M3 model (whose price is a bit over EUR2100 with sales
| tax in the EU) has 8 GB of non-upgradeable ram. Yikes.
| MikusR wrote:
| Think different.
| Condition1952 wrote:
| It's pre-recorded so they don't have to censor the audience's
| boo
| toddmorey wrote:
| You can now spec a 14-inch MacBook Pro up to $6,899.00. You'll be
| so pissed when you leave that bad boy at Starbucks.
| spandextwins wrote:
| Can't wait to see how AMD and NVIDIA respond with their new ARM
| offerings. It's going to be an interesting next few years!
| nateb2022 wrote:
| My point of view as well! Several months ago I purchased the M2
| MBA I'm currently using, and which I plan to use for the next
| 3-5 years. By the time I'm ready for a new machine, its excited
| to think about how far not only performance but efficiency will
| have increased by then. Perhaps we'll have reached a point
| where battery life will be measured in days instead of hours.
| resharpe105 wrote:
| 13,3" MacBook Pro is discontinued in favor of 14" MacBook Pro
| with M3.
|
| I say good riddance.
|
| Would love it if they did made the bezel smaller on an iMac
| though, alongside the M3 upgrade.
| bluish29 wrote:
| I really don't know why apple is insisting on making the entry
| specs something like 512GB SSD and 8GB RAM for a ~$1600 device
| and worse for Their Mac Air line where it starts with 216GB SSD
| for $1000 (M1) or $1100 (M2). That's already a price tag of some
| of the high-end alternatives.
| hparadiz wrote:
| I was close to getting the air for $900 from Costco but stopped
| in my tracks from the low storage and upgrading just the
| storage is +$500. A frankly insane mark up for 256 GB of
| storage.
| foldr wrote:
| >and upgrading just the storage is +$500
|
| The base model airs all have 256GB now. Upgrading to 512GB is
| $200, not $500. I don't think any Mx laptop has ever had a
| $500 charge for a one-level storage upgrade.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The base model is offered at a discount at Costco but
| there's no such discount for the next level up in storage
| so the mark up must take this discount into account.
| gorbypark wrote:
| I think the worse thing is that many people don't even know
| it's a possibility to upgrade, if they want. I am not sure if
| it's the same in all countries, but third party sellers only
| have access to the base models to sell. I talked a nice couple
| out of buying a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM at an in-store mini
| Apple Store at major department store recently. Of course the
| sales people don't mention that you can go to the real Apple
| Store and get models with 16GB (or 24 in the case of the M2
| MacBook Air).
| jasoneckert wrote:
| Through several comparisons and careful word choices, it seemed
| clear that Apple is strongly hinting that Intel Mac users should
| seriously consider updating to M3, or Apple Silicon in general.
|
| This may indicate that the next version of macOS could support
| Apple Silicon exclusively.
| minimaxir wrote:
| That will only happen when all the Intel Macs are depreciated
| and no longer receive major OS updates, which will take a
| couple years (macOS Sonoma's minimum supported MBP is from
| 2018)
| veber-alex wrote:
| The baseline M3 model is a complete joke, 8GB of RAM and support
| for only one external display.
|
| This should have been a MacBook Air.
|
| Edit: Oh, and one less thunderbolt port, nice.
| minimaxir wrote:
| It does have a much better screen and relevant ports compared
| to an Air.
| electriclove wrote:
| I imagine it will go into the MBA in the near future. This
| offers a low price point for an MBP
| sixothree wrote:
| Wait. Isn't it 8GB of _unified_ RAM?
| supergeek wrote:
| The craziest thing is that that single external display can be
| up to 6k/60hz! Surely for those 21.2 million pixels you could
| run 2 4k displays at 8.2 million pixels each.
| tedunangst wrote:
| It's not that easy to turn one fast clock into two slower
| clocks.
| bonney_io wrote:
| > This should have been a MacBook Air.
|
| Great, let's compare it to the MacBook Air, then. Compared to
| the 8GB/512GB M2 MacBook Air, at $1399, the M3 MacBook Pro has:
|
| - M3 chip
|
| - Slightly larger display with higher brightness, HDR, and
| ProMotion support
|
| - SD Card and HDMI ports
|
| For only $200 more!
|
| Sounds like an amazing "Pro" MacBook Air.
| et-al wrote:
| The passively-cooled Air will also hit thermal throttling
| sooner vs a Pro.
|
| (Yes, for most users just browsing the internet and writing
| documents, this won't an issue.)
| minimaxir wrote:
| MacBook Pro product page/tech specs is up:
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
|
| Prices for the old Pro/Max compariable SKUs seem changed: Pro SKU
| is $100 lower, Max SKU is $100 higher?
|
| Notably, starting at 18GB RAM for M3 Pro, 36GB RAM for M3 Max
| (+4GB bump for each)
|
| Pro/Max GPUs have lower memory bandwidth?
|
| Up to 12 hours battery life using wireless web on M3 Pro and Max
| 14 inch, 15 hours on 16 inch.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| The full 40c Max GPU is back up to the full 400GB/s bandwidth,
| but you're right, the Pro has significantly lower memory
| bandwidth, and the 30c Max does too.
| tunesmith wrote:
| They keep getting heavier. Not even sure I can reliably handle
| the 16" MBP with one hand.
| w10-1 wrote:
| I can't find any details on Dynamic caching. Anyone else?
|
| I'd be interested in instrumentation on the memory allocation.
| gzer0 wrote:
| Apple showcased their continued silicon innovation with the new
| M3 chips. Here's what's new:
|
| Performance Leaps: * CPU Up to 15% faster than M2
| * GPU Up to 30% faster than M2 * Neural Engine 60% faster
| than M1
|
| New Capabilities: * Hardware ray tracing support
| * Up to 128GB unified memory (M3 Max)
|
| Efficiency: * Built on 3nm process *
| MacBook Pro up to 22 hr battery life
|
| Value: * 14" MacBook Pro starts at $1599 *
| 24" iMac starts at $1299
| MikusR wrote:
| Also negative 50gbps on memory speed
| MikusR wrote:
| I was wrong, it's minus 50GB/s
| drBonkers wrote:
| Does that have a big impact on use-feel if you aren't doing
| data-write intensive tasks?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| LLM inference speed is bandwidth limited.
| osti wrote:
| Pretty underwhelming a bit like the A16 release. They basically
| upped the frequency in A16 and that's how they got their single
| core performance improvement, not much of an IPC increase to
| speak of. Given the numbers they quoted, same story will repeat
| for M3. And A16 also came with a power consumption increase so
| the 3nm process from TSMC is disappointing as well.
| WatchDog wrote:
| No mention of the Ultra.
|
| Should we expect an M3 Ultra, with the interposer, or have they
| ditched that idea?
|
| I can't really tell from the die shot if it's been cropped out,
| or is just missing.
| gorbypark wrote:
| The Ultra will come when the Studio (and Pro, but that was just
| released) is spec-bumped, I am sure.
| amanzi wrote:
| I just bought a 14" Macbook Pro on sale with the top spec M1 Pro
| and 1TB storage. I'm already amazed at how powerful _and_
| efficient this laptop is. I can 't see myself wanting/needing to
| upgrade for another couple of years at least.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I would never buy an Apple device but damn the 128GB memory
| option is tempting. I am still looking for a decent (business)
| laptop that has 64Gb but the options I found until now are
| limited... Lenovo P-series offers 64GB max and the max I could
| get on Dell is 32GB. (If someone has alternatives: please
| enlighten me)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Weird. There are Dell laptops with 64gb memory on Amazon.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dell-XPS-Business-Laptop-Processor/dp...
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah have a 64Gb dell here (precision 7670)
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > If someone has alternatives
|
| If you want notebooks with 128 GB memory, you want to look at
| the highest-end workstations.
|
| Dell Precision 7680 and 7780 (comes with new CAMM memory form
| factor)
|
| HP ZBook Fury 16 G10
|
| Both of these have options for up to 128 GB (ECC) memory.
| pb7 wrote:
| Good lord are those things designed like shit.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what you think is 'shit'? Do they
| _look_ bad, are they functionally worse, or worse on
| performance /thermals/etc?
| pb7 wrote:
| Yes, they look bad. They look like products that were
| designed by passionless bean counter MBA types that
| create products off a spec sheet with zero regard for the
| end user. It's a 1.2" thick lump of plastic (somehow
| heavier than an all metal 16" MacBook Pro) that will
| creak and bend when you pick it up reminding you how
| little care was given to it.
|
| http://imgur.com/a/T2ZVZ8R
|
| Horrific.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > 1.2" thick lump of plastic
|
| I don't know what that measurement means. Neither the
| Precision nor the ZBook are plastic; they have metal
| chassis. That's how magnesium, aluminium, and titanium
| look like without anodising them with fancy colours like
| Apple does.
|
| These notebooks are also thicker and heavier than usual
| because they have to dissipate something like 250 W of
| heat. Good on Apple for designing such power-efficient
| SoCs; many high-end Windows notebooks have to make do
| with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA cards that will perform better
| than that MacBook Pro, but unfortunately also draw about
| twice as much power.
|
| Finally, these are _business workstations_ , not fashion
| statements. People--or rather, companies--buy them to get
| work done on them, not show them off in Starbucks. They
| are meant to be serviced easily and quickly, and come
| with up to 5 years of next-business-day onsite support
| with 24/7 telephone service.
|
| Both the ZBook and the Precisions have 4 DDR5 slots, 3-4
| NVMe SSD slots _and_ a WWAN NVMe slot, a replaceable
| (though possibly not upgradeable) GPU card, an easily-
| replaceable display assembly and battery, and a
| productive keyboard with a keypad, and a reasonably large
| and accurate trackpad with buttons. They have Ethernet
| ports, USB-A ports, and can support up to _five_ high-
| resolution displays.
|
| These workstation product lines have also come with
| service manuals for the past _two decades_. Apple
| released service manuals for its own products _this year_
| , after significant regulatory and consumer pressure.
|
| The MacBook has its advantages, and I fully understand
| why someone might buy one. But _your_ argument is in
| extremely bad faith--it 'looks ugly', but you haven't
| seen it in person. Having actually used these machines
| for 5+ years, I can tell you they are pretty damn solid.
|
| I daresay these don't even look that different to
| Framework's notebooks, which are the apple (pun not
| intended) of HN readers' eyes.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Businesses ostensibly buy them "to get work done on them"
| but they actually tend to do so regardless of the work,
| and they're often truly awful day to day form factors
| loaded with so much crap software that getting work done
| on them could be considered lucky. Everything has
| tradeoffs; rapid serviceability, good deals, and high
| specs, are all useful traits, but if they come at the
| cost of introducing friction between the operator and the
| task, then that's usually ignored by business. Sometimes
| that's a great tradeoff and no friction is introduced,
| but that's rarely part of the consideration in a top-down
| hierarchy where purchasing decisions are made by some
| other department en-masse.
|
| There is some threshold of computational demand and cost
| past which the specs dominate other factors, but before
| that I personally consider friction in various
| circumstances to be a higher priority.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| Most of these notebooks also come with fairly spartan
| Windows images. They can also be configured from the
| factory with Linux (usually Ubuntu).
|
| Plus, any company worth its salt that deploy these
| notebooks would re-image them anyway.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > I would never buy an Apple device
|
| Why not?
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| "Apple bad" probably.
| lopis wrote:
| Because despite being currently at the forefront of
| technology, Apple has shown time and time again to be anti-
| user.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| Good question. I would like to hear OPs answer.
|
| Personally I've been tempted by the hardware, but I don't
| care for Apple's software bundle (MacOS, iTunes, etc.). With
| the M-series they have show indifference/reluctance/hostility
| to work with other vendors and the open source community.
| Asahi Linux has made major progress, but _despite_ support
| from Apple.
|
| Another (minor) frustration is the keyboard layout. I'm user
| to having backspace, delete, insert.
|
| Finally, Apple's offerings are a bit heavier that the ~1kg
| ultrabook I like to work with.
|
| [Summary] _I_ wouldn 't say I would _never_ buy Apple, but so
| far they haven 't presented products appealing to me. And at
| the root that is caused by their approach to stewarding their
| "ecosystem".
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I am a linux fanboy. I have worked on an Apple macbook
| before and I did not like it. Apple is too expensive for
| what they offer (my opinion).
| Xiol32 wrote:
| No OP, but UK keyboard layout on Apple devices sucks,
| seperately from overriding decades of muscle memory reaching
| for cmd instead of ctrl. Could never get used to UI/workflow.
| No native window snapping (back in the day at least).
| Workarounds required for a lot of my tooling, no native
| containers, until recently no native VM solution (believe UTM
| solves this). Brew.
|
| As a disclaimer I do think Linux with Gnome provides the
| absolute best developer experience so you can take all my
| opinions with that in hand.
| vasdae wrote:
| >overriding decades of muscle memory reaching for cmd
| instead of ctrl
|
| You get used to this in three days.
| Xiol32 wrote:
| Then you go back to your other devices and get it wrong
| there instead.
| vasdae wrote:
| If that's the issue then configure your mac to switch
| command and control. It's somewhere in settings.
| eviks wrote:
| Then you do some simple remap on your other devices and
| live a consistently happy life after that
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I completely agree with you. As a developer working with
| containers; Linux is the only viable option.
| eviks wrote:
| I don't get it, the button swap is trivial to configure,
| how can it be such an important criticism? (though the cmd
| key is more comfortably located, so it's better to do the
| swap on Windows)
| hotnfresh wrote:
| > No OP, but UK keyboard layout on Apple devices sucks,
| seperately from overriding decades of muscle memory
| reaching for cmd instead of ctrl.
|
| Is cmd somewhere else on UK Apple keyboards, than on US
| ones?
|
| If it's like the US ones, I spent my first 25ish computing
| years on Windows and Linux (and Sun, et c.--point is, not
| Mac) but after getting used to Mac's shortcuts, I gotta
| hand it to them: what they've done is more correct than
| what everyone else is doing. Ctrl-shortcuts involve more
| stretching and wrist movement, so, are slower and push one
| closer to RSI, and putting more common shortcuts on cmd
| than ctrl leads to fewer collisions (no awkwardness in the
| terminal, for example).
| Xiol32 wrote:
| It's why I rebind ctrl to caps lock on all my devices.
| thefz wrote:
| Personally, you pay for a thing that you can't modify in any
| way and it ends up being not yours.
|
| I don't trust the software either.
| frant-hartm wrote:
| Lenovo has been offering 128 GB since P52, that is for around 6
| years. The current model with 128 GB RAM is P16 Gen 2.
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th...
| znpy wrote:
| 128GB models have been around for quite a while...
| Essentially any laptop with four DDR4 ram slots should be
| able to take 128GB ram.
| vaylian wrote:
| Framework (https://frame.work) offers up to 2x32GB RAM support.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's probably a threshold where I'd start looking at a well
| integrated solution for remoting into a decent server. Do you
| actually need/want to use 128GB locally? Not disputing that if
| you do have a requirement, but have you considered a smaller
| machine and spending the rest on a non-mobile decent setup? The
| battery and weight are really affected once you go into the
| mobile workstation territory.
| sparkling wrote:
| Honest question: What tasks are you doing that require 128GB
| RAM?
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _What tasks are you doing that require 128GB RAM?_
|
| You're thinking about it the wrong way.
|
| The more RAM you have, the faster + smoother your experience
| using an application will be, and this will be much more
| noticeable if you usually run multiple applications at the
| same time, like virtually everyone in the world do.
|
| This is especially true now that we have options to run
| local-only AI models. The next couple of years will be
| interesting.
| mrweasel wrote:
| While I do agree that 8GB is a little dated, even the 8GB
| MacBook Air from 2020 runs most applications smoother than
| modern Windows machine with twice as much RAM. Apple have
| the smoothness part figured out, without the need for more
| memory (for the average consumer at least).
|
| Your point about local AI is pretty interesting. It does
| seem highly likely that computers with limited memory could
| "age" faster than they have done in the past ten years,
| with the advent of more AI workloads.
| ZiiS wrote:
| A 8GB Air can exist without a 8GB Pro.
| chx wrote:
| > The more RAM you have, the faster + smoother your
| experience using an application will be,
|
| This is the mentality that MSI targets with the $1300 AORUS
| Z790 Xtreme X motherboard. More is clearly better, right?
| Nope. Not at all. In this case, there is an amount of RAM
| an app will consume and you have that much, the rest will
| not do much. Even buffering/caching only can consume so
| much. It's very hard to fill even 64GB in a laptop but
| 128GB is near impossible.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| What do you mean, Llama 70b at full precision will barely fit
| ;-)
| ivolimmen wrote:
| Software development. Microservices running locally
| (Docker/Podman, etc.)
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Large neural net inference.
| WiSaGaN wrote:
| ThinkPad P1 gen 6 offers 96GB max. [1] I usually buy the
| minimum version of memory and SSD, and then upgrade myself.
|
| [1]
| https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_P...
| merricksb wrote:
| Earlier submission:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078063
|
| (483 points/6 hours ago/590 comments)
| baz00 wrote:
| Perhaps the most interesting thing is the UK pricing. I paid
| PS1899 for my M1 Pro. The M2 Pro was PS2149. The M3 Pro is PS1899
| again for same spec.
|
| The insults however come now. There is now a PS1699 8Gb option.
| Seriously in 2023? 8Gb?!?! And you can get an i7 Lenovo T14 gen 4
| with 32Gb of RAM and 1TB disk for PS1297. Every 8Gb RAM increment
| with Apple is a complete rip off.
|
| And the total build price for my silent i5-13500, 32Gb, 1TB
| desktop with an RTX 4070 and 27" 4k Dell monitor was PS50 less
| than the base level 8Gb MacBook Pro.
|
| No thanks. I'm out.
| larodi wrote:
| Well, price includes membership for the sect of 'good morning,
| Amazing'...
|
| Honestly I feel much more in place with a win11 setup recently.
| For a dev who does not rely on apple's Xcode etc it makes very
| little difference. Besides win11 is scary snappy on every
| decent box, not only Microsoft surfaces.
|
| And except for the speed gains, the gains from using OSX have
| been diminishing rapidly for years. Sticking with osx12 on some
| devices does not impact my workflow at all. I guess I can go
| back to 10.x and ... VScode, git, etc will still work the same.
|
| Speaking of security et al - well that's fine, but some of the
| most aggressive hacks are targeted at OSX.
| baz00 wrote:
| Agree on all counts.
|
| I'm mostly just happy since I switched back to windows 11
| that I've got an OS I can actually drive from a keyboard that
| doesn't leave my hands brutally mangled from meta key
| combinations.
| irusensei wrote:
| No doubt current day Windows is a capable device for all
| tasks. Too bad it treats you like a free user by clogging
| your operating system with ads while spying on you like a
| crazy stalker.
| baz00 wrote:
| I don't get any ads. But yeah I'll give you that on the
| Telemetry.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Honestly it doesn't feel any different for me on MacOS.
| Both OSes push first-party music and cloud services, both
| OSes _beg_ you to use their browser, both OSes show news
| with their own built-in ad networks. At this point for
| Windows 11 and MacOS 13, I 'm shocked how little these
| OSes have meaningfully changed since the early 2000s.
| Both companies feel like they're taking a detour around
| user empowerment to focus on Selling Moar Services(tm).
|
| While we're looking at things from a retro-idealist lens,
| even Android and iOS seem unnecessarily bloated. It feels
| like the vast majority of every FAANG's engineering
| effort goes into crippling the user nowadays.
| jesseendahl wrote:
| Genuine question: have you actually used a modern Mac? OS X
| was renamed macOS 7 years ago in 2016.
| baz00 wrote:
| I have used it for the last 15 years and it hasn't got
| worse and hasn't got better. It has barely changed. It is
| _done_. However there are load of little annoying bugs
| (Reminders makes me want to kill people) and the developer
| story on the platform is a mess now. Literally minor
| releases will break things I use on a regular basis. Last
| month they broke something that broke Maxima (mathematical
| CAS) for me. I have to use that, so off to windows it is.
| DerekL wrote:
| Also, it was never called "OSX".
| AmVess wrote:
| I've been using M1 since it came out. Loved it. Fast, snappy,
| smooth. Prior to that, I had a Dell XPS that ran loud and
| always felt laggy to use.
|
| I was going to upgrade to M2, but $2k+ for an essentially
| base laptop. Nah.
|
| I grabbed a new Zenbook 14 OLED w/current gen i7. Metal
| chassis, nice keyboard, nice trackpad. Nice 120Hz screen.
| Solid construction. Windows 11 which I have gotten used to.
| It feels pretty well polished in terms of hardware and OS.
| Feels snappy. i7 is a wonderful, fast CPU.
|
| While it isn't an M2 Mac, an M2 Mac is no longer wildly
| better than a good Windows laptop. The $1300 difference for
| the same performance is a strong selling point for the
| Zenbook which is 96% as good as an M2.
| karmakaze wrote:
| That sounds great! How's the battery life?
|
| Theoretically using large black terminal windows can
| maximize it.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Why did you need to change computers at all? If you had an
| M1 mac, seems like a weird choice to want to replace it
| with what seems like a horizontal move
| tmikaeld wrote:
| There's no other computer that has this performance on
| integrated GPU, unified memory and battery time.
|
| But if you don't need any of that, of course even a used
| windows laptop would do and can have 32GB RAM.
|
| I paid 2200EUR for the M2 Macbook Pro in Sweden, but PC
| hardware sales have been tanking hard, so I think the pricing
| reflects that.
| baz00 wrote:
| But as I found, it has too many drawbacks.
|
| Firstly, you can't add any more RAM to it. This turned out to
| be a BIG problem for me as I handle a lot of fairly huge RAW
| files in Adobe Lightroom.
|
| Then there's the fact that it actually spends 95% of its time
| docked to my Studio Display and using the BT mouse and
| keyboard which fuck out all the time.
|
| And the battery life isn't as great as people make it out to
| be. If I am on the road, which is basically never, then I'm
| lucky if I get 4 hours out of it.
|
| So I thought sod it, why shouldn't I just have a proper
| desktop instead which solves all of these problems. I looked
| at the M2 studio, went pfffft at the price, and threw
| together a windows desktop. I've got hard wired keyboard,
| mouse, ethernet and headset and I can throw another TB in it
| or double the RAM to 64Gb for less than $100 each.
|
| And Excel isn't a piece of shit on it.
| mathverse wrote:
| It's a price for a one of a kind portable device. I used to
| think like you but then I realized Ill be better of just
| accepting the price or suffering with an inferior windows
| device.
| baz00 wrote:
| I've got an M1 Pro MBP, studio display, ipad pro, apple
| watch, iphone. Meh. IT cost a lot and makes you feel
| special. That is all. It's not objectively better at
| achieving your goals.
|
| At this point I don't agree that windows is inferior. It
| is just different. And quite frankly from a developer and
| productivity perspective it's actually a lot better.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > At this point I don't agree that windows is inferior.
| It is just different. And quite frankly from a developer
| and productivity perspective it's actually a lot better.
|
| I think it depends a lot of what you're developing.
|
| For a lot of open source stuff, even OSX is a 2nd class
| citizen, and windows isn't even considered. Of course,
| you can do everything in a VM, but that can have its own
| problems.
|
| If you live out of Visual Studio, though, I'm sure the
| experience is nice.
| baz00 wrote:
| In my case mostly mathematical modelling tools, simple
| desktop apps etc. VScode is where it all takes place. I
| mean I even typeset in VSCode!
| lhoff wrote:
| > For a lot of open source stuff, even OSX is a 2nd class
| citizen, and windows isn't even considered. Of course,
| you can do everything in a VM, but that can have its own
| problems.
|
| While it is true that windows is not considered, with
| WSL2, that doesn't matter anymore. Everything (99%) just
| works seamless with the Linux environment. And yes that's
| not truely native and technically a VM but I prefer WSL
| to a VM on macOS every day of the week. Ironically, if I
| would need to switch to Linux, I'd buy a Macbook.
| mathverse wrote:
| What laptop would you recommend as a substitute for mbp
| then?
| rjh29 wrote:
| Or ~PS1000 for a Ryzen 7 32GB 2TB T14s Gen 3 if you buy your
| own SSD (saving PS200+) and drop Windows (~PS80).
| baz00 wrote:
| No thanks. I had a Ryzen T495s. Nothing but aggro that thing.
| I religiously avoid AMD because in the last decade I've had
| nothing but trouble from all of their hardware. Intel and
| NVidia only these days.
|
| I've got an i5-1235U T14 gen 3 which I paid PS730 for (new,
| but damaged box) and stuffed another 8Gb stick and a 1TB WD
| SSD in it. That is fine for my personal use as it's mostly an
| Office and light code machine.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Up until the most recent Intel gen, Ryzen has been the
| clear leader in both battery life and integrated graphics,
| blowing Intel away. Pretty much any internet forum will
| advise you to buy AMD for the T series.
| baz00 wrote:
| Don't need integrated graphics. Battery is not that
| important to me.
|
| Reliability is.
| saltcured wrote:
| This caught my interest. What problems have you had? I had
| a T495 and was happy with it running Fedora. So much so,
| just ordered the latest P14s ryzen model as its
| replacement.
|
| The T495 developed a fan problem just recently, but since
| it is out of warranty it was easier to get my employer to
| order a new machine than to figure out how to repair it. If
| it were my personal machine, I probably would have searched
| for parts and tried to repair it myself and keep using
| it...
|
| Edit to add: I am in your mirror universe because it was
| bad experiences with Intel + NVIDIA in Thinkpads which
| motivated me to want to try AMD again. I don't mind pure
| Intel iGPU models, but find the combination nothing but
| trouble.
| teekert wrote:
| The sad thing is that we all know this. Normies buy the cheap
| version and you have to explain to them: Yes, it gets slower
| quick, it's shit, you shouldn't have bought it, no you can't
| upgrade anymore. Then they feel bad.
| znpy wrote:
| ah, yes, that's truer than it seems. it's literally a bait on
| non-technical people.
|
| but then again, you don't get to 1+ trillion valuation just
| like that...
| baz00 wrote:
| Nailed it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A "normie" would only need an M1 MacBook Air and that will be
| good for 10 years. I am using a 2015 MacBook Air, and since I
| only browse/do basic spreadsheet stuff/pdf things, it still
| works fine.
|
| If you need anything more than a Macbook Air, you are not a
| "normie", and should be capable of doing better research
| before you buy.
| baz00 wrote:
| Unlikely. My daughter is a normie and hit a wall with the
| basic M1 Air.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Doing what?
| baz00 wrote:
| University work. Pretty much what apple promote it for.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I was hoping for more specifics.
|
| Our definitions of normie are probably different, because
| there is definitely university work that requires
| performance that "normal" (majority) of people will never
| need.
| dottjt wrote:
| When it comes down to it, I think you'll find most people buy
| Mac for the software.
|
| I've tried using Windows and Linux and it's just not as good.
| If this weren't the case, then I doubt Apple could charge such
| exorbitant prices for their hardware.
| baz00 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you'd go for a Mac for the software? The
| cloud experience sucks and is really really expensive, most
| of the provided desktop apps are buggity or so disparate to
| the rest of the universe that they are a disability and
| everything is pretty portable.
|
| I mean here I am all VSCode + Linux (WSL2) + Office 365 +
| Adobe + Davinci Resolve + mathematical tools
| (SciPy/Maxima/Minitab) here. All are portable (apart from
| Minitab)
| dottjt wrote:
| One such example is music production. Audio on Mac just
| works. You can plug in a microphone from 20 years ago and
| it will just work. With Windows this is not the case. You
| need appropriate drivers, often which are not available.
| This is not including all the issues with audio routing
| etc.
|
| I will agree that native cloud sucks on Mac. I would
| disagree about the desktop apps, I think they are superior
| to Windows. Programming is also superior on Mac, in my
| opinion.
|
| Personally speaking, the big thing I hate most about
| Windows are the defaults. Like, the default keyboard
| shortcuts i.e. using F keys in opinion, is very poor
| design. Also the lack of an additional modifier key makes
| Windows less ideal from this point of view.
|
| Of course, each OS has their pros and cons. Windows just
| doesn't work for me.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I've found the opposite. All my Focusrite and Presonus
| hardware interfaces rely on OSX software that is no
| longer supported.
| dottjt wrote:
| What does the software do that's necessary to make it
| function? I have a Focusrite and don't rely on software
| for it to function.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Normally the mixing control software for older hardware
| that works fine like Saffire Pro (FireWire interface) or
| a Tascam USB interface that has an internal mixer that is
| impossible to use on the hardware. Eg. line/instrument
| switches are done digitally.
|
| I ended up going back to Windows to use these and
| switched to Studio One instead of Logic Pro X.
| steve1977 wrote:
| > Audio on Mac just works.
|
| Except when it doesn't. Like for example with macOS
| Ventura, where lots of people had huge problems with
| audio dropouts on USB interfaces.
|
| The problem was never really acknowledged by Apple (as
| usual), but "magically" fixed in Sonoma (without any
| mention in release notes).
|
| Leaving many users with the dilemma that they should
| upgrade to Sonoma asap to fix the USB problems, but on
| the other hand should wait with upgrading because maybe
| their DAWs or plugins are not compatible with Sonoma yet.
| dottjt wrote:
| I agree that it's a problem. But also, you don't have to
| upgrade to the latest OS. Most people wait to see if
| there are any problems before they upgrade.
|
| I think this applies to most things in life. Especially
| programming libraries at software companies. It's almost
| assumed that something will break when you upgrade any
| kind of system.
| steve1977 wrote:
| If you bought a Mac with Ventura, you pretty much just
| "had" the USB problem, without upgrading.
|
| And downgrading these machines is somewhere between
| impossible and a huge pain in the b...
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah my piano doesn't work with macOS Ventura suddenly.
| Audio dies after 2 minutes. I'm only using it for
| monitoring so I just plug bloody headphones in it and be
| done with the computer.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The audio HDMI output from my MacBook M1 Pro since
| release always had choppy buffer loops. That is until one
| of the most recent software updates. Finally it 'just
| works'.
| aeonik wrote:
| I heard this a lot. I did music production on Linux for 5
| years, and tried it on Windows for a few months.
|
| Then I bought my M1 Mac and was shocked to learn that I
| think it's actually the least sophisticated, by far.
|
| Don't get me wrong, my M1 hardware competes with my 5950x
| Desktop system... which amazes me.
|
| But, Jack2 on Linux was pretty cool, a little rough
| around the edges, but worked really well.
|
| Now with Pipewire becoming the standard, I can't imagine
| why anyone would pick a platform besides Linux for any
| real time Audio+Visual routing/processing.
|
| It's just so easy to pipe any of your data to any other
| piece of software, including over the network.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| > Now with Pipewire becoming the standard, I can't
| imagine why anyone would pick a platform besides Linux
| for any real time Audio+Visual routing/processing.
|
| Software compatibility almost entirely non existent for
| industry standard workflows.
|
| > It's just so easy to pipe any of your data to any other
| piece of software, including over the network.
|
| Not a frequently required feature (or at all) for 99% of
| music production use cases.
|
| Linux audio is getting there, but it's a million miles
| away from being a feasible choice for most people in the
| industry. I mean, I don't think I could find a _single_
| person who would trade their MacBook for a Linux laptop
| when its running their entire live setup.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Speaking as someone who bought a Mac for programming
| reasons but then picked up video editing, iMovie has been a
| fantastic first-time video editor.
| bborud wrote:
| I agree that Apple's software is low quality. In too many
| cases shockingly and consistently so over many years. You
| are not surprised to see the spinning ball of fail when
| running Apple software. You expect their developers to make
| beginners' mistakes.
|
| And Apple has some spectacularly useless systems developers
| that manage to have at least a couple of daemons regularly
| blow up and use lots of CPU in every release. It is almost
| like some elaborate running joke.
|
| I mean, what idiot wrote the calendar daemon. How the heck
| do you keep a job as a systems developer when you need to
| burn 70-80% CPU for prolonged periods of time to sync a
| calendar that hasn't even had significant use for years?
| Seriously, if anyone knows who wrote it, I'd be interested
| to understand how things went so wrong for them.
|
| Yes, Apple's software sucks.
|
| _However_ , I don't buy Apple to use their software or
| their cloud services.
|
| I use macs for the same things you do: run the applications
| I need to do my job. Applications that are not made by
| Apple. My list of requirements isn't long.
| - Must be a unix variant - Must be decent hardware
| (most laptops are horrible) - Must be able to run the
| developer tools I use - Must be able to run Fusion
| 360 - Must be able to run professional photo editing
| software - Nice if it can run Ableton Live
|
| That's it.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > most people buy Mac for the software
|
| IMO the last OS release that was extremely smooth and nearly
| completely bug-free was Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
|
| Nearly everything afterwards was a slow downwards spiral,
| both in terms of useability and quality.
| karmakaze wrote:
| But Lion let you resize windows from any corner or edge. It
| does mark a turning point with the loss of Front Row and
| iTunes keep getting worse.
| Gigachad wrote:
| After having so many windows laptops fall to pieces quite
| literally, I just get the MacBook now. They last so much
| longer and you easily get your monies worth
| pjmlp wrote:
| For the price of Macs, I get Lenovo and Dell graphic
| workstation like laptops, e.g. Thinkpad P series.
|
| While I am a big NeXTSTEP fan, I am not paying for the
| experience in detriment of less capable hardware, specially
| when I can just rent Mac hardware from work from our R&D
| pool.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| No, the only reason I'm gonna buy a Mac is to be able to
| build & publish an iPhone app.
|
| The Apple ecosystem is closed, you must pay the Apple
| hardware tax to get in.
| rhuru wrote:
| I switched from Lenovo X1 Carbon and totally gave up on
| Windows and bought an Mac again. Windows has become some kind
| of shitty garbage of an OS. Reminds me of the toolbar creep
| in IE that use to happen 10 years ago. Now the entire OS is
| fucking like that.
| znpy wrote:
| > I paid PS1899 for my M1 Pro. The M2 Pro was PS2149. The M3
| Pro is PS1899 again for same spec.
|
| How do you think Apple has become a 1+ trillions company?
| eviks wrote:
| Due to iphone
| eddie_catflap wrote:
| As ever when new models come out I fully spec'd one out on the
| UK store. 128GB M3 Max, 8TB SSD. PS6999 14", PS7299 16". Ouch
| baz00 wrote:
| Humans need at least 8 kidneys these days.
| brailsafe wrote:
| More scary is the lower spec prices. 64gb ram, best cpu
| because it's required for 64gb, 512gb ssd (no ssd upgrade),
| $5k CAD before tax.
| drcongo wrote:
| But, then you've got a _Lenovo_.
| nirui wrote:
| Lenovo Lenovo Lenovo.... where do I start...
|
| My Motorola (owned by Lenovo now) One Power phone got a dead
| pixel on it's screen :)
|
| My Lenovo monitor not only got a dead pixel, within a year it
| also developed a horizontal dead line. I was very lucky that
| it happened a month before the warranty expires. And after
| the repair, the new replacement screen also got a dead pixel
| on it :)
|
| My new Thinkpad dead within days after I received the
| machine, and it took over a month for the repair to complete
| :)
|
| The monitor and Thinkpad were directly brought from Lenovo,
| shipped straight out from their warehouses, so no one else to
| blame.
|
| Oh did I forgot the Thunderbolt controller firmware issue in
| my previous Thinkpad T480 :)
|
| It's safe to say I'm not very happy with Lenovo.
|
| ... But on the over hand, for who's planing to buy a Macbook,
| I usually recommend them to watch these videos first just to
| lift the spirit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7m4aUxHcM
| (this is part 3, there are also part 1 and part 2)
|
| I mean, guess why I'm still with Thinkpads :)
|
| BTW: It wasn't me who downvoted you :)
| baz00 wrote:
| yeah Lenovo support is shit. It's why I just buy two of
| them most of the time :)
| bengale wrote:
| > I paid PS1899 for my M1 Pro. The M2 Pro was PS2149. The M3
| Pro is PS1899 again for same spec.
|
| Just take a look at the last several years of GBP/USD. Our
| currency was in the crapper for a while and that impacted
| prices.
| baz00 wrote:
| I fucked up. The spec is worse.
| theodric wrote:
| I got (for my wife) an entire Framework Ryzen 7840U system,
| plus a 2TB SSD and 32GB RAM purchased separately, for THE
| UPGRADE COST on an M2-class MacBook between its base spec and
| 32GB RAM/2TB SSD. It's a farce. I don't want to leave the
| Apple/OSX ecosystem after 20 years, but I simply can't justify
| it any longer. I bought a EUR300 used ThinkPad. Fedora's pretty
| good these days, and I'm mostly in a terminal or Firefox. I'll
| live. Wife's been mostly running Windows on Macs since 2011
| anyway.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| to be fair that upgrade price also includes a jump from m2 to
| m2 pro and the improved design with better screen
| oezi wrote:
| It is a major failure of them not to put pressure on everyone
| else by doubling memory. The LLM models would massively
| benefit. They could buy 32GB for probably less than 100 USD as
| a manufacturer.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I generally disagree with arbitrary hardware comparisons, like
| "why buy apple when I could build some gaming rig for $5" for
| obvious reasons that have been beat to death in every comment
| section ever, but you're very right about the hardware upgrades
| specifically.
|
| I want a new mac, but I feel like an idiot paying those prices
| for both ram and ssd upgrades, moreso than ever before. In CAD,
| at one point, ram upgrades were already too much at $200 or
| something, but I'd reluctantly suck it up and be happy with the
| decision anyway. Now they're literally $500 for each 16gb
| increment, and $500 for each TB increment. I'm not about to
| replace my existing mac with some Windows hunk of garbage, but
| I'll have to wait until I'm either rich or I can directly
| translate those upgrades into predictable dollar amount returns
| on the investments. It's bizarre that I price out a laptop
| that's $5k before tax that doesn't have more than a 512gb SSD,
| has only half the possible RAM, and doesn't even have the
| largest screen.
|
| On the other hand, the mid-tier option is probably still great,
| but costs about $3500 and also still only has a 512gb ssd
| leshokunin wrote:
| This release cadence seems too much. I don't have insights on
| why, but I'd be shocked if there's this much demand. Even a 2018
| Mac works fine for most work information work.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| What release cadence? One a year?
| dual_dingo wrote:
| This is the second generation of Macbook Pro this year. The
| M2Pro/Max where introduced only in January.
| leshokunin wrote:
| As the other person said, it's been 9 months since the m2.
|
| You don't need to defend Apple here. They'll be fine. It's OK
| to question this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why should anyone care how often a business sells a newer
| product?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Well it's frustrating that basically no matter how close
| you buy a device to launch it's almost immediately
| invalidated. I got an M2 max 3 months ago and it's
| already last gen...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What is the definition of invalidated? I am assuming your
| machine is still capable at doing what it did 3 months
| ago.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| As a customer, I very much like more frequent updates. This
| removes the problem of having to time your purchases right to
| get recent hardware.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Looks like they are reusing almost everything from last years
| model. If they have the new chip ready, it makes perfect sense
| to start sticking it in the MacBooks they are putting out.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| So. Tempted. Decent ports again, decent keyboard again, plus the
| M3 goodness, and it comes in black :)
|
| But the MacOS shitshow is a deterrent. Anyone know if you can
| install Linux on them?
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Why is MacOS a shit-show? And why would Linux be better?
| m463 wrote:
| to me, every release is more locked down and dumbed down.
|
| and privacy. I remember when macos used to ask you before
| sending data back to apple. Now it does it all day every day,
| with 1000 pages of privacy policy explaining what they do,
| but little or no ability to prevent it.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| pretty much this.
|
| It's a consumer OS, same as Windows, designed to be as
| idiot-proof as possible and protect the user from making
| stupid mistakes. I'm not in that target market (though I
| still make a lot of stupid mistakes).
|
| Neal Stephenson said it better:
| http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html
| nomel wrote:
| > every release is more locked down and dumbed down.
|
| Do you have some specific examples, that are still a
| problem?
|
| You can still switch over to "unsafe" mode, and turn off
| SIP.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| People say this every time. It's no more locked down than
| it was 10 years ago.
| znpy wrote:
| I'm using a 14" M1 macbook pro for work and frankly, the
| hardware is good/okay but MacOS is awful.
|
| I'm keeping an eye on Asahi Linux, i might pull the trigger
| and use that on my macbook.
|
| But I'm skeptical about this, I might just buy a second hand
| thinkpad (as usual) or maybe a framework laptop (waiting for
| reviews on the 16" model) and call it a day.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| That's pretty much where I am too. Using a Purism 13 laptop
| at the moment which is great but showing its age, and I
| don't think there's a processor upgrade path for it. So at
| some point in the next couple of years I'm getting a new
| laptop, and Framework is the leading contender at the
| moment, but the Apple chips are looking mighty tasty.
| manuelflara wrote:
| > So. Tempted. Decent ports again, decent keyboard again
|
| Maybe I'm missing something but both of those things are
| unchanged from the M2 model right? Maybe even the M1 MB Pro had
| the same as well, can't remember
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Yeah, but version 3. I have learned over the decades to not
| consider a new tech product until it hits v3 ;)
| eloisant wrote:
| There is Asahi Linux, but I wouldn't buy a Mac to install
| Linux. Either buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled, or a PC
| that you know is well supported.
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| Also the base 14" M3 only has one external monitor support vs two
| in in M3 Pro and 2 Thunderbolt 3/USB C port vs 3 Thunderbolt
| 4/USB C ports.
| chx wrote:
| Yes and they do not make this clear and then people come crying
| to reddit when they find out.
|
| It gets even better with Apple steadfastly refusing to support
| MST well over a decade after its introduction so even if you
| have an M\d Pro or Max CPU many docks and chaining monitors
| will not work.
| watdoyoumean2 wrote:
| how do they not make it clear its literally on
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
|
| even on the order page https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-
| mac/macbook-pro
| thefz wrote:
| This is such a terrible way to segment the line.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| I used to buy Pros for years until I more or less accidentally
| ended up with an Air for a period and never went back. Lighter,
| enough performance and cheaper.
| dijit wrote:
| I'm using an M2 Air professionally for around a year now, it's
| excellent and it makes me seriously question why developers
| need macbook pro's.
|
| The only limitation I notice is that I can only have a single
| external display.
| packetlost wrote:
| Yeah, the single external display is the biggest limiting
| factor for me. The performance is generally there (except for
| more heavy compilations). I'm thinking of picking up a M3 Pro
| Mac Mini when those eventually release to combat the display
| limitations.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| RAM and displays, for sure.
|
| But also, Airs used to be absolutely AWFUL devices in terms
| of performance when they were still intel. I think the stigma
| has stuck around.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > makes me seriously question why developers need macbook
| pro's
|
| For work I am developing a massive JVM monolith server
| application and even the M1 Pro 16" takes minutes for it just
| to start up. Compilation is also slow with millions of lines
| of code. I have SQL Server running on an x86 Linux VM with
| Rosetta in Docker. Need all the CPU I can get. The Macbook
| Air simply has less CPU performance and is thermally
| throttled. It would waste too much of my time.
|
| For my personal hobby C++ coding, the Macbook Air 8GB would
| be enough.
| geokon wrote:
| Honest question,but how do you live with 8GB or RAM? I have 16
| now and I run out regularly without doing anything too crazy
| (though in large part because Emacs and CIDER leak memory like
| crazy)
|
| Doesn't having to close background applications constantly
| absolutely maddening ?
| erkkonet wrote:
| You can get up to 24GB RAM on the Air.
| geokon wrote:
| did not know that! The Apple webpage somehow threw me off.
| Thanks. Would be a bit hard downgrade from a 16inch 3:2,
| but I'll keep it as an option if I need to get a new laptop
| at some point
| benterix wrote:
| It's great Apple realized cutting down on ports makes zero sense.
| My MBP has only two thunderbolt ports. I can see the new MBP also
| has HDMI, SD, and even microjack. I can finally throw my dongles
| and hubs away. That's the end of an ugly era.
| supergeek wrote:
| You get back ports, but those base model M3 MBPs only support a
| single external display. You get HDMI and 3 40gbps thunderbolt
| ports, but can only use one of them at a time for screens. You
| need to bump up to the M3 pro models to get multiple external
| display support.
| sccxy wrote:
| They realized?
|
| This new "basic" "pro" has only two thunderbolt 3 ports but
| "pro" "pro" has four thunderbolt 4 ports.
|
| Basic Pro even supports only one external monitor.
|
| Basic Pro is very misleading people when they buy MacBook Pro.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _This new "basic" "pro" has only two thunderbolt 3 ports
| but "pro" "pro" has four thunderbolt 4 ports._
|
| My understanding is that it can't be branded Thunderbolt 4
| because it only supports one external monitor, but that it's
| effectively Thunderbolt 4 in every other respect.
|
| The technical explanation for the limitation of the built-in
| display support is that the base SoCs have one Thunderbolt
| bus that supports 2 display outputs, one of which is used by
| the integrated display.
|
| Still, there are workarounds:
| https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-
| two-o...
| hbn wrote:
| That's not new, this laptop chassis launched in 2021. It's also
| thicker and brought MagSafe back!
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing threads:
|
| _Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078063
|
| _Apple supercharges 24-inch iMac with new M3 chip_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078068
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