[HN Gopher] Review: The fastest of the M4 MacBook Pros might be ...
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       Review: The fastest of the M4 MacBook Pros might be the least
       interesting one
        
       Author : freeqaz
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2024-11-12 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | brink wrote:
       | Nice machines, but $600 for an extra 16GB of ram and an extra
       | 512GB of storage is theft.
       | 
       | My new AMD linux laptop compiles my projects faster than my old
       | M1, and that's good enough for me. It has 32GB of ram, 4tb of
       | storage, and was half the price of the equivalent Macbook. Apple
       | may make the best laptops right now, but other manufacturers are
       | closing the gap.
        
         | porphyra wrote:
         | Yeah that is just insane.
         | 
         | I saw some videos from China [1] where people were upgrading
         | the storage in the new M4 Mac Minis. The Mac Mini's SSD is on a
         | removable pcb but it is raw nand flash as opposed to, say,
         | typical m2 2230 SSDs that have a built-in controller. So they
         | had to desolder it. But getting someone in China to desolder
         | and upgrade the SSD to 2 TB is like 90% cheaper than buying it
         | from Apple.
         | 
         | [1] http://xhslink.com/a/o0tLp4thqsDZ
        
           | seanmcdirmid wrote:
           | Is there really much point though? With thunderbolt 5
           | external storage seems really viable.
        
         | samatman wrote:
         | How much realistic battery life do you get?
         | 
         | Can you hear the fans spin in a typical week?
        
           | brink wrote:
           | About 8 hours. That is the biggest sacrifice I make by not
           | going with a Macbook. But fwiw I'm on Arch, I haven't spent
           | any time on battery optimization config. I'm sure I could get
           | a few extra hours if I played with the configs.
        
         | nakovet wrote:
         | It's expensive and it's good that other options are available,
         | it's not insanely expensive though, the people that need the
         | upgrade often make 6 figure salaries and can afford the upgrade
         | although they might not like the idea of paying it, I
         | personally hate it but I know when I buy the machine will last
         | me at least 5 years, which is good enough for me.
        
           | Kudos wrote:
           | I took a different route and went with a Framework laptop.
           | I'll be interested to see how long it takes for it to fully
           | ship of Theseus.
        
       | nakovet wrote:
       | I find the cinebench benchmarks meh, every YouTuber and every
       | publisher uses it, few YouTubers do more of a practical test
       | which is quite more useful. I would like to see a comparison with
       | older models as most people that have an m3 are not considering
       | an upgrade.
        
       | ArchOversight wrote:
       | > RAM upgrades across the whole lineup. This particularly
       | benefits the $1,599 M4 MacBook Air, which jumps from 8GB to 16GB
       | 
       | The MacBook Air is still an M3 only as the highest end
       | M-processor.
        
         | zuminator wrote:
         | From earlier in the article it's apparent that "Air" is a typo
         | and should be "Pro."
        
       | Kon-Peki wrote:
       | It's always worth remembering that a year from now the media will
       | be breathlessly talking about the M5 Macs. These M4 ones are
       | fantastic machines and are a great upgrade for many, and it is
       | nice to see the yearly progress. But most people who already have
       | Apple Silicon computers should probably wait at least another
       | year.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-12 23:00 UTC)