[HN Gopher] My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
___________________________________________________________________
My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
Author : secure
Score : 236 points
Date : 2025-10-31 10:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (michael.stapelberg.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (michael.stapelberg.ch)
| arbirk wrote:
| You won't notice 8ms difference in input lag
| moonAA wrote:
| agree
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I have 165Hz monitors. Software feels noticeably more snappy.
| bitwize wrote:
| Musicians can feel latencies as low as 1ms.
|
| Apple is designing pro gear for its target audience.
| 542458 wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? I saw a study a short while
| ago showing the "just noticeable difference" for audio
| latency was best case around 26ms.
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3678299.3678331
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I definitely notice the difference between 10 ms and 26 ms.
| 26 ms already feel sluggish when playing drums, guitars or
| keyboard instruments. But there is no way anyone can feel a
| difference of 1 ms.
| relaxing wrote:
| The study wasn't conducted with musicians making music.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| It depends on the frequency. At higher frequencies, the ear
| is capable of higher time precision. It's why a snare pops
| and a bass drum blooms.
| agos wrote:
| That's audio latency, not musicians doing music. In my
| experience if you have two musicians that are supposed to
| be playing unison, 5-6 ms is enough to feel "off"
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I highly doubt anyone notices 1ms latency. I might believe
| rare people can notice 10ms.
| koiueo wrote:
| Anecdotically, 7ms vs 3ms latency is felt as weirdly heavy
| action when playing midi keyboard. It's not felt as
| latency, but it's felt. And I bet the difference could be
| reliably established in double-blind testing (3 samples,
| find an outlier).
|
| 1ms seems less believable, but I wouldn't be surprised, if
| some people could notice that too.
| ksec wrote:
| Again I have to point to this Microsoft Research Video.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
| msephton wrote:
| Fantastic video. QED.
| 201984 wrote:
| Fun fact, 1ms is the approximately the amount of time it
| takes for sound to travel 1 foot. Do musicians move all their
| speakers to be within one foot of their ears? Do people in a
| band notice a difference if they're not standing within 1
| foot of their partners? No, they don't.
| doph wrote:
| lots of people can notice that. my last job involved
| meticulously timing our software's input-tp-display latency,
| testing viewers' responses to it, and fighting for each and
| every ms we should shave off of it.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| For my sins, I have recently been called upon to cold boot
| and then provision a few dozen Samsung tablets by hand. The
| "laggy Lagdroid piece of lagshit" pasta has been repeated a
| lot. I swear to God it just ignores ten percent of touch
| events if it's doing anything in the background.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Anyone can notice an entire frame of input lag.
|
| The question is more whether it'll bother you.
| baq wrote:
| Couldn't be more wrong.
| josephg wrote:
| I've been swapping back and forth between a MacBook Pro and a
| Linux workstation lately. The input latency difference is
| insane - macOS is sooo much worse than Linux. It's gotten to
| the point that I'm porting code to Linux just so I don't have
| to use my editor from macOS.
|
| I don't know how many milliseconds the difference is, but going
| back and forth it's so obvious to me that it's painful.
| msephton wrote:
| As a seasoned gamer, and one time world record holder, I
| absolutely can notice 8ms of lag.
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the
| nano-texture display! :)"_
|
| Mine as well. What is the likelihood this will happen?
|
| I have a hunch it will not and they will either scrap the nano
| texture completely or keep it as differentiator for the Pro line,
| but I am curious what others think.
| raggi wrote:
| Mine too, and I bought an air in the last generation and I
| barely use it because I thought the 60hz display would be ok,
| but I've been living with 120's everywhere for long enough the
| 60hz is actually horrible to use now. First world problems for
| sure, but it's enough that I literally don't use the machine.
| oofbey wrote:
| I've used MBP for many many years, but recently bought an MB
| Air. I slightly miss the extra ports. I love how much lighter
| it is. I never notice a speed difference. I'm always ssh'd into
| a Linux box if crunching any real data, and for UI stuff the
| CPU doesn't need a fan at all. Definitely gonna stick with MB
| Air.
| carbocation wrote:
| One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen
| brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits)
| compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).
| flyinglizard wrote:
| There's an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR
| max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when
| working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.
| whycome wrote:
| There are so many base features that are inexplicably
| relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience.
| Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.
| filoleg wrote:
| > There are so many base features that are inexplicably
| relegated to 3rd party apps.
|
| > Like a better finder experience.
|
| > Or keeping screen on.
|
| Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those
| 2 purposes?
|
| Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on,
| I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously
| used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues
| with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features
| (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit,
| just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for
| "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I
| just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).
|
| As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything
| different, but I would gladly try out and potentially
| switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend
| your alternative.
| dan_can_code wrote:
| Not op but raycast is for sure an improvement on the
| stock finder.
|
| https://www.raycast.com/
| jen729w wrote:
| I use the Finder and Raycast heavily. Raycast is not, and
| does not sell itself as, a Finder equivalent.
|
| OP: I've tried all the Finder replacements. Path Finder,
| for example. At the end of the day, I went back to
| Finder. I always have a single window on screen with the
| tabs that I use all day. This helps enormously. I show it
| on YouTube here (direct timestamp link):
| https://youtu.be/BzJ8j0Q_Ed4?si=VVMD54EJ-XsxkYzm&t=338
|
| You _can_ use Raycast to directly open files. I show that
| here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbtoR2q_Ds&t=482s
| - still doesn't make it a Finder replacement.
| greggh wrote:
| Default Folder X is a huge improvement to Finder,
| specifically open and save windows. It's in SetApp too.
| inference-god wrote:
| What's crazy is that Vivid app...costs money!
| deaddodo wrote:
| Welcome to the Mac ecosystem. Where basic functionality
| is gated behind apps that Apple fans will tell you "are
| lifesavers and totally needed in Windows/Linux/etc)" for
| $4.99-14.99/piece. And, when they get popular enough,
| Apple will implement that basic functionality in its OS
| and silently extinguish those apps.
|
| And that's _when_ they let you modify /use your OS the
| way you want.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I don't mind that. 3rd party Mac utilities are nice: well
| designed, explained and do what they're supposed to
| because someone makes a living of it. I'm happy to pay
| these prices.
| nwienert wrote:
| There's multiple free versions and forcing HDR on isn't a
| basic feature by any means.
| deaddodo wrote:
| And yet, it's a simple toggle (sometimes multiple, for
| specific display flows) in GNOME, KDE, and Windows 10+.
| nwienert wrote:
| A far as I understand Windows only has a toggle for HDR
| on vs off, that's not what we're talking about here, this
| is about forcing the full brightness of HDR always, even
| outside videos. It's something that manufacturers don't
| allow for as it reduces display life, it would actually
| be an anti-feature for a consumer OS to expose as a
| setting. It'd be like exposing some sort of setting to
| allow your CPU to go well beyond normal heat limits.
| jonaustin wrote:
| Looks like there's an OSS app that does basically the
| same thing: https://github.com/starkdmi/BrightXDR
| zrm wrote:
| NTFS writing isn't that inexplicable. NTFS is a proprietary
| filesystem that isn't at all simple to implement and the
| ntfs-3g driver got there by reverse engineering. Apple
| doesn't want to enable something by default that could
| potentially corrupt the filesystem because Microsoft could
| be doing something unexpected and undocumented.
|
| Meanwhile if you need widespread compatibility nearly
| everything supports exFAT and if you need a real filesystem
| then the Mac and Windows drivers for open source
| filesystems are less likely to corrupt your data.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'll take ntfs-3g over the best implementation of exFAT
| in a heartbeat. Refusing to write to NTFS for reliability
| purposes, and thereby pushing people onto exFAT, is
| shooting yourself in the foot.
| zrm wrote:
| At which point you're asking why Apple doesn't have
| default support for something like ext4, which is a
| decent point.
|
| That would both get you easier compatibility between Mac
| and Linux and solve the NTFS write issue without any more
| trouble than it's giving people now because then you'd
| just install the ext4 driver on the Windows machine
| instead of the NTFS driver on the Mac.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Is it that easy to use on Windows these days? I should
| give it a try.
| znpy wrote:
| Apple is likely to be in the position to negotiate nrfs
| documentation access with Microsoft for a clean-room
| implementation, with NDAs and everything.
|
| My money is on apple not having the will to do thar.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Finder is the number one reason it boggles my mind that
| people claim macOS as head and shoulders above other OSes
| "for professionals". Finder is a badly designed child's toy
| that does nothing at all intuitively and, in fact, actively
| does things in the most backwards ways possible. It's like
| taking the worst of Explorer (from Windows XP), and
| smashing it into the worst of Dolphin or Nautilus; and, to
| top it off, then hiding any and all remaining useful
| functionality behind obscure hot keys.
| asdff wrote:
| It has been more or less the same as long as I've used it
| (20 years or so). Familiarity is a plus. It is a pretty
| simple and straightforward tool. I'm not sure what you
| might find perplexing about Finder.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Finder has become fine, but when I first switched to Mac,
| it was hard to believe Finder was so bad compared to XP-
| era Windows Explorer.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| > keeping screen on
|
| `caffeinate -d` in the terminal - it's built-in
| veqq wrote:
| People have to pay money to change screen brightness on a
| Mac?!
| danaris wrote:
| ...I'd have to say that seems like a radical reading of the
| text.
|
| No; you can adjust screen brightness just fine with the
| built-in settings, including with the F1 and F2 keys (plus
| the Fn key if you've got them set that way).
|
| This Vivid app is specifically for extra HDR levels of
| brightness. I've never had a problem with my M1 or M4 MBPs,
| either inside or outside, with the built-in brightness
| levels. (But, to be fair, I don't use it outside a lot.)
| chii wrote:
| I imagine what those custom brightness apps do is not
| magically increase the brightness, but change the various
| pixels' brightness in accordance to some method/algorithm
| such that you see what appears to be brighter whites when
| placed next to certain other colors.
|
| It's not what is implied by the parent post - where the mac
| is limiting the brightness only to have the app unlock it.
| sgerenser wrote:
| No, I believe the issue is Apple limits the top half or
| so of the brightness/backlight level for HDR content
| only. The apps allow it to be used for normal non-HDR
| content.
| smileybarry wrote:
| I think it's just a matter of some "I need HDR" syscall.
| radicality wrote:
| I would personally be afraid of using that in case it causes
| damage long-term to the screen either due to temperature or
| power draw or something. Idk if there are significant
| hardware differences but in this case I would guess there's a
| real hardware reason for it?
| greggh wrote:
| I've used vivid nearly every day since the week the first
| m1 MacBook Pro came out, no damage to my screen at all.
| treetalker wrote:
| > (When I chose the new laptop, Apple's M4 chips were current. By
| now, they have released the first devices with M5 chips.)
|
| Does anyone have any feedback on the new M5 models?
| danielbln wrote:
| I upgraded from M4 to M5 MBP because I broke my M4's screen and
| so my company ordered a replacement M5 while the M4 is being
| repaired. I can't really notice a difference at all. It's an
| absolute work horse, but so was the M4. I _did_ spring for the
| nano texture display this time around, and that is definitely
| nice (but nothing to do with the M5)
| j_bum wrote:
| Do you think you'll have any regrets about the nano texture
| display?
|
| I was torn between nano and regular glass, but opted for the
| regular glass.
| ymyms wrote:
| I have the nano-texture display on my M4. At this point, I
| don't think I can go back to standard glass. For text work,
| I find there are no downsides. If you work more with color
| and detailed art, I think that's the only case where you
| need to put extra thought into it. Otherwise get it
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I hate to say it but it's totally worth it. Direct sunlight
| incredible.
| danielbln wrote:
| No, I love it. I had non-matte glass screens in my MacBooks
| since 2012 and I didn't realize how much better it is to no
| longer see lights reflected in there all the time.
| danaris wrote:
| I got the nanotexture on my current work M4 MBP--it doesn't
| completely eliminate reflected light, but it diffuses it a
| _lot_. If I were in a dark room with a light source
| positioned perfectly to reflect off my screen in my face, I
| would probably still have trouble with it, but in general I
| don 't need to reposition the screen to avoid glare nearly
| as much.
|
| I would say it's worth the extra, what, $200 or so? on the
| price of the M4 MBP. If it were much more expensive, I
| would be less sure.
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| It's often much more than $200 as the base models can be
| had for huge discounts, like $450 off retail, but the
| second you check the nano texture option, you lose the
| discount and you tack on the extra $200. So it's often
| closer to $700 in some cases.
| Aloisius wrote:
| I just upgraded from an M1 to an M5 a couple days ago.
|
| It is rather shocking how much faster everything feels given I
| didn't think my old macbook pro was slow. While I expected
| xcode builds to be faster (and they are), I was a bit shocked
| when opening a new firefox tab was instantaneous since I hadn't
| noticed it wasn't before.
|
| Another thing I didn't expect is that the new speakers have
| noticeably more bass and can get quite a bit louder.
|
| I _didn 't_ get the nano-textured display, because having to
| adjust the display angle to get colors to render correctly is
| more annoying than having to do it for glare (I don't work in a
| high-glare environment).
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Incredible hardware. Love that I can also run local llms on mine.
| https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider/issues/4526
| amelius wrote:
| But are these llms worth their salt?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| With 128GB of memory they can have real world use cases. But
| they won't be as good as SoTA hosted models.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| They're not unless you curve the grading because they're
| running locally.
|
| Which some people do, but I don't think the average person
| asking this question does (and I don't)
| bigyabai wrote:
| If you bought a fully-featured computer that supports compute
| shaders and _didn 't_ run local LLMs, you should be protesting
| in the street.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Can't you run small LLMs on like... a Macbook air M1? Some
| models are under 1B weights, they will be almost useless but I
| imagine you could run them on anything from the last 10 years.
|
| But yeah if you wanna run 600B+ weights models your gonna need
| an insane setup to run it locally.
| jen729w wrote:
| They "run" in the most technical sense, yes. But they're
| unusably slow.
| zero_bias wrote:
| I run qwen models on MBA M4 16 Gb and MBP M2 Max 32 Gb, MBA
| is able to handle models in accordance with its vram memory
| capacity (with external cooling), e.g. qwen3 embedding 8B
| (not 1B!) but inference is 4x-6x times slower than on mbp. I
| suspect weaker SoC
|
| Anyway, Apple SoC in M series is a huge leverage thanks to
| shared memory: VRAM size == RAM size so if you buy M chip
| with 128+ Gb memory, you're pretty much able to run SOTA
| models locally, and price is significantly lower than AI GPU
| cards
| accrual wrote:
| > My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the
| nano-texture display! :)
|
| I agree on the nano-texture display having used one in person for
| a little bit. It's sort of like an ultra fine matte texture that
| isn't noticable while using it, but is noticable compared to
| other devices in the same room. I hope it becomes a more standard
| option on future devices.
|
| That said, I've used Thinkpads with matte displays and while not
| as fine, they mostly have the same benefit.
| ymyms wrote:
| I think my ideal would be a MacBook Air with both the nano-
| texture and higher 120hz refresh rate the Pro has. With that,
| I'll trade an extra second of compile time for my rust projects
| for the smaller form factor.
| nofunsir wrote:
| are rust devs the new vegans?
| krashidov wrote:
| Dang I was gonna get one with nano texture but the opinion was
| 50/50 everywhere so I went with the Devil I know
| rsingel wrote:
| It's the first matte screen on a MacBook since 2011.
|
| I ran that thing for like 6 years til the replacement for the
| failed GPU failed again.
|
| More matte screens please!
| christophilus wrote:
| I'd love an air with a high density display.
|
| My mom has an M1 air, and its resolution is not great.
| Everything looks a bit blurry compared with my 4K Dell XPS my
| wife's MacBook Pro m4 display. I guess the air's native
| resolution means it has to do fractional scaling.
| Tagbert wrote:
| The Air has about 218dppi screen, but your wife might have a
| non-integer resolution selected.
| weiliddat wrote:
| Yeah the default doesn't do a 1:1 display to pixel ratio.
|
| Just to be pedantic it is integer scaled (from 1440x900 to
| 2880x1800 but then resampled down to the native resolution
| of the MBA 2560x1600 via something better than bilinear).
| barrenko wrote:
| What is going on with the Dells recently?
| fouc wrote:
| The m1 air native resolution is 2560x1600 and the 'best for
| display' default is 1280x800, that's 2x integer scaling. But
| yeah if you have a different resolution set, it'll be
| fractional and probably a bit blurry in comparison.
| smileybarry wrote:
| To be it looked very much like the matte coating on Dell
| monitors, where bunched up same-color pixels have this "feels
| like there's a rainbow here but if I focus on it I don't see it
| anymore" effect. _Definitely_ better than ThinkPad matte,
| though.
| anonymous344 wrote:
| why is it getting hot?
|
| i noticed my ola macbook pro was connected to my router even when
| it was sleeping.. probably sending some private info periodically
| to apple and cia
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| If you'd like to change that, you can go to System Settings -
| Battery - Options - Wake for Network Access
|
| Or just search for "Power Nap" (what it used to be called).
| They usually wake up intermittently for Time Machine backups,
| wake-on-lane and other stuff.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I have mine set to `NEVER` [wake for network access] and yet
| it still makes DNS requests _often_ while asleep.
|
| Curiously, it is able to maintain network connection even
| through the 1/4" steel of the safe it's stored within. The
| older Intel MBP doesn't and cannot.
| javier2 wrote:
| I have done this, yet every now and then my macbook still
| wants to connect to my bluetooth headphones from my backpack.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that
| glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll
| out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of
| marketing around it.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if they will (re)introduce premium keyboards with
| sculpted keys that self-center your fingers someday. magsafe
| coming back was nice, maybe more extra ports?
| dylan604 wrote:
| MagSafe + SD card reader + headphone jack + USB-C/TB4 only
| ports is fine by me. In 2025, I'm well past needing USB-C to
| USB-A dongles. We've had since what 2015/16 to start the
| conversion to C only.
| fpoling wrote:
| My car from 2023 still came with USB-A port. No-so cheap
| USB camera that I recently bought came with USB-A port.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The camera came with a USB-A port, or simply provided a
| cable that had a USB-A end? I've never seen a camera with
| an A port
| fpoling wrote:
| It was a cable with USB-A end. The cable cannot be
| detached from the camera.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Historically, traditional matte screen finishes exhibited poor
| optical qualities by scattering ambient light, which tended to
| wash out colors. This scattering process also affected the
| light from individual pixels, causing it to refract into
| neighboring pixels.
|
| This reduced overall image quality and caused pixel-fine
| details, such as small text, to appear smeary on high-density
| LCDs. In contrast, well-designed glossy displays provide a
| superior visual experience by minimizing internal refraction
| and reflecting ambient light at high angles, which reduces
| display pollution. Consequently, glossy screens often appear
| much brighter, blacks appear blacker without being washed out,
| colors show a higher dynamic range, and small details remain
| crisper. High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to
| use even in full daylight, and reflections are manageable
| because they are full optical reflections with correct depth,
| allowing the user to focus on the screen content.
|
| Apple's "nano texture" matte screens were engineered to solve
| the specific optical problems of traditional matte finishes,
| the washed-out colors and smeary details. But they cost more to
| make. The glossy option is still available, and still good.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sounds like Apple marketing wankery. I have a matte high
| density LCD from 2013 (Lenovo) that looks great. Does Apple
| even make the displays? What exactly are they "engineering"
| here?
| kergonath wrote:
| > What exactly are they "engineering" here?
|
| The coatings, which do matter quite a bit when you are
| optimising for some durability/optical quality tradeoff.
|
| Glass covers make screens more durable, but imply internal
| and external reflections. Laminated screens on glass panes
| solves the internal reflections and improve transmission,
| but do not help with glare and external reflections. Those
| can be improved by texturing the glass, but at the cost of
| diffraction and smearing, leading to a decrease in
| effective resolution. Unless the texture becomes small
| enough, but then you need it to be durable enough to avoid
| being wiped or damaged by things that might come into
| contact with the screen.
|
| It turns out that there is a lot more than the bottom
| layers that matter in a display. You can see all these
| problems being solved in succession when looking at the
| evolution of Apple's displays over the years (and others',
| but it is much easier to find information about the good
| and bad sides of any Apple product). It's fascinating,
| actually.
|
| [edit] add the issue of oils on the human skin and you have
| do deal with oleophobic coatings for touch screens, which
| is another very important factor to consider. In addition
| to how the touch sensors are integrated.
| kakacik wrote:
| Somebody drank its portion of cool aid for sure. There is
| that little detail that glossy screens needed absolutely
| perfect conditions in front of them to not reflect literally
| whole world, making resulting visuals often subpar to matte.
| I have never, ever been in work conditions in past 20 years
| that didn't manifest this in annoying and distracting way.
|
| I haven't seen a single display that ever overcame that
| properly for long term work. Sure, phones use it but they
| increased luminosity to absurd level to be readable, not a
| solution I prefer for daily long work.
|
| I admit there are corner cases of pro graphics where it made
| sense (with corresponding changes to environment) but I am
| not discussing this here.
| seemaze wrote:
| Do you prefer glossy paper work? glossy book pages? glossy
| construction documents? The preference for a non-reflective
| surface for the relaying of dense information has been
| established for decades.
|
| You know what's glossy? Movie posters and postcards.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| non-reflective surfaces you cite have pigments on TOP.
| screens have depth causing parallax and light spreading.
| Your point would be valid if screens were paper-thin and
| image pixels came out the very surface
| asdff wrote:
| You'd need a jewelers loupe to appreciate parallax and
| spreading. Not a real problem in general use.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| i use a matte screen protector on my iphone. without it,
| i can see pixels. with it, i cannot. no loupe, just my
| nearsighted eyes
| asdff wrote:
| You can see actual pixels on a retina iphone? That is
| remarkable eyesight. I could do it on old non retina
| iphones but not on retina models.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Kind of a cool thing about being nearsighted. Without
| glasses, I can get very close to things and still focus
| on them, i get to see very small details.
| elliottkember wrote:
| Paper, books, and construction documents all use reflected
| and not refracted light.
| seemaze wrote:
| ooh, my feathers were a bit ruffled (for reasons unrelated)
| when I wrote the above.
|
| I still say for comfortable all day viewing and
| productivity, there is no comparison. Glossy does have more
| pop on a phone or watching movies in the dark, but I'd go
| blind doing that all day every day..
| zdragnar wrote:
| > High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use
| even in full daylight,
|
| I guess Apple cheaped out on their glossy displays, because I
| definitely didn't care for mine in full daylight
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Glossy vs matte has started to matter less as the peak
| brightness goes up.
|
| When your screen can do 1,600 nits, daylight isn't as much
| of a problem
| asdff wrote:
| Yeah this m3 pro isn't really doing 1600 nits. Marginally
| brighter than my 2012.
|
| To get to actual 1600 nits you need to use scripts.
|
| https://github.com/SerjoschDuering/macbook_1600nits
|
| Not sure the impacts to display health or battery running
| the screen full bore like this.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I use Lunar and have used it on my Pro Display XDR and
| every MBP with XDR I've owned with 0 issues.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'd rather not blow my battery budget on fighting the sun
| for visibility.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I tend to do outdoor things outdoors, so occasionally
| cranking up brightness is not an issue.
|
| I'd much rather do that than to have a granier screen
| with worse viewing angles all the time I'm not in direct
| sunlight, so next time around I'll be back on glossy.
| asdff wrote:
| I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It
| was glorious. None of these issues were present or really
| noticeable. Maybe you'd notice it in lab setting but not irl.
| Kind of like 120hz and 4k; just useless to most peoples eyes
| at the distances people actually use these devices. I've only
| owned matte external monitors as well and again, no issues
| there.
|
| The glossy era macbooks otoh have been a disaster in
| comparison imo. Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy
| to get _external_ reflections. Using it outside sucks, you
| often see yourself more clearly than the actual contents on
| the screen. Little piece of dust on the screen you flick off
| becomes a fingerprint smear. The actual opening of the lid on
| the new thin bezel models means the top edge is never free of
| fingerprints. I 'm inside right now and this M3 pro is on max
| brightness setting just to make it you know, usable, inside.
| I'm not sure if my screen is actually defectively dim or this
| is just how it is. Outside it is just barely bright enough to
| make out the screen. Really not much better than my old 2012
| non retina model in terms of outdoor viewing which is a bit
| of a disappointment because the marketing material lead me to
| believe these new macbooks are extremely bright. I guess for
| HDR content maybe that is true but not for 99% of use cases.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| To each their own but I have a matte M4 Pro and I don't
| like it, and the screen is noticeably worse than my glossy
| M2 Pro.
|
| There's a graininess to the screen that makes it feel a
| little worse at all times, meanwhile I never had a problem
| in daylight just cranking brightness into the XDR range
| using Lunar.
|
| It's especially noticeable on light UIs, where empty space
| gets an RGB "sparkle" to it. I noticed the same thing when
| picking out my XDR years ago, so it seems like they never
| figured out how to solve it.
| daymanstep wrote:
| 120Hz is absolutely a noticeable improvement over 60Hz. I
| have a 60Hz iPhone and a 120Hz iPhone and the 60Hz one is
| just annoying to use. Everything feels so choppy.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| 4K too, at anything over 15" or so.
|
| I'm always baffled people insist otherwise.
| asdff wrote:
| At the distance I look at my TV screen (about 7 feet from
| the couch) I can't make out the pixels of the 1080p
| screen. 4k is lost on me. 2020 vision but I guess that is
| not enough.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I'm 3m from my TV and I can absolutely tell 4K from
| 1080p, but it is indeed subtle.
|
| But a fraction of that distance to my monitor makes even
| 4K barely good enough. I'd need a much smaller 4K monitor
| to not notice pixels.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Unless the screen is right in front of your face, video
| codecs and their parameters matter more than FHD vs UHD,
| IMO.
|
| At least to me, with corrected vision, a high quality
| 1080p video looks better than streaming quality 4k at the
| same distance.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| Compare apples to apples, e.g. gaming, and the difference
| is glaring.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Resolution is much less important for video than it is
| for text and user interfaces.
| rkomorn wrote:
| This is exactly why I went to 4K.
|
| Used to have a 27" 2560x1440 monitor at home. Got a 4K
| 27" at work, and when I got home, the difference was big
| enough that I (eventually) decided to upgrade the home
| monitor.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I also have perfect vision in terms of focal length - but
| it turns out I have astigmatism in opposite axises in
| both eyes.
|
| Glasses make a huge difference when watching TV, and are
| the dividing line between being able to tell the
| difference between 4K and 1080p and not being able to
| discern any.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I agree with this, but I use a 43" 4K TV as my monitor...
| which probably isn't what you meant.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I notice it on my 27" monitor. I've seen 15" 4K displays
| and that's about the limit where I can see the
| difference.
|
| My eyesight isn't perfect, either.
| asdff wrote:
| I can't tell at all when my mbp is in 120hz or 60hz. I
| tried to set up a good test too by scrolling really fast
| while plugging and unplugging the power adapter (which
| kicks it into high power 120hz or low power 60hz).
| embedding-shape wrote:
| One of those things that some people notice, some people
| don't. I'm definitely in the camp where I feel
| differences between 120hz and 60hz, but I don't feel 60hz
| as choppy, and beyond 120hz I can't notice any
| difference, but others seemingly can. Maybe it's our
| biology?
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I would bet most people would fail a blind test.
| dgfl wrote:
| Basically everyone who has played videogames on pc will
| notice the difference. I easily notice a drop from 360Hz
| to 240Hz.
|
| I also use 60Hz screens just fine, saying that getting
| used to 120Hz ruins slower displays is being dramatic.
| You can readjust to 60Hz again within 5 minutes. But I
| can still instantly tell which is higher refresh rate, at
| least up to 360Hz.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Videogames also do the input every loop so there's a big
| difference there. It must be evaluated with a video only.
| lmz wrote:
| We're talking about monitors here, which usually have a
| mouse cursor on it for input. Of course it would be hard
| to tell between 60 vs 120Hz screens if you used both to
| play a 30FPS video.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Lots of games don't do input on every loop. Starcraft 2
| has 24 hz input.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| 60 to 120? Generally there are tell tale signs. If I
| quickly drag a window around it's clear as day at 120.
|
| Most people who've used both 60 and 120 could tell,
| definitely if a game is running. Unless you're asking me
| to distinguish between like 110 and 120, but that's like
| asking someone to distinguish between roughly 30 and 32.
|
| North of 120 it gets trickier to notice no matter what
| IMO.
|
| I can live with 60 but 85+ is where I'm happy.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think it's more noticeable if you are touch interacting
| with your screen during a drag. If you are scrolling
| using the mouse, you might not realize it at all like if
| you were scrolling with your finger.
| codedokode wrote:
| It's super easy, put your finger on a touchpad and move
| it fast in circle so that the cursor also moves in
| circle. As the eye is not that fast, you will see
| multiple faint mouse cursors images. With 120 Hz there
| will be twice more cursors than with 60 Hz.
|
| On a perfect display you should see just a faint grey
| circle.
|
| Another test is moving cursor fast across the white page
| and tracking it with eyes. On a perfect display it should
| be perfectly crisp, on my display it blurs and moves in
| steps.
|
| So basically on a perfect display you can track fast
| moving things, and when not tracking, they are blurred.
| On a bad display, things blur when tracking them, and you
| see several instances otherwise. For example, if you
| scroll a page with a black box up-down, on a bad display
| you would see several faint boxes overlayed, and on a
| perfect display one box with blurred edges.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You could replicate a "perfect display" by analytically
| implementing motion blurring (which is really just a kind
| of temporal anti-aliasing) in software. This wouldn't let
| you track moving objects across the screen without blur,
| but that's a very niche scenario anyway. Where 120hz
| really helps you is in slashing total latency from user
| input to the screen. A 60hz screen adds a max 16.667ms of
| latency, which is plenty enough to be perceived by the
| user.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I believe refresh rate/FPS is one of those things where
| it doesn't really matter but human eyes get spoiled by
| the higher standard, making it hard to go back. I never
| saw issues with 30 FPS until going to 60, etc. Hopefully
| I never get a glimpse of 120 or 144Hz, which would
| require me to throw out all existing devices.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Best take in this thread.
|
| The jump forward doesn't even necessarily feel that huge
| but the step backward is (annoyingly) noticeable.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'm not convinced. I have an iphone 14 pro which has a
| 120 Hz screen. I can absolutely see the difference when
| scrolling compared to my older iphone 11 or computer
| screens.
|
| However, I'm typing this on my Dell monitor which only
| does 60 Hz. It honestly doesn't bother me _at all_. Sure,
| when I scroll long pages I see the difference: the text
| isn 't legible. But, in practice, I never read moving
| text.
|
| However, one thing on which I can't go back is
| resolution. A 32" 4k screen is the minimum for me. I was
| thinking about getting a wider screen, but they usually
| have less vertical resolution than my current one. A 14"
| MBP is _much_ more comfortable when looking at text all
| day then my 14 " HP with FHD screen. And it's not just
| because the colors and contrast are better, it's because
| the text is sharper.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen.
| It was glorious. None of these issues were present or
| really noticeable._
|
| They were absolutely noticable. Contrast was crap. I
| immediately went with glossy with my next MBP around that
| same period.
| ra wrote:
| It became more of an issue when retina came out, that's
| when they stopped non-reflective screen options.
| musicale wrote:
| I can't go back to the low contrast and washed-out look
| of matte screens unfortunately. The nano texture isn't
| terrible but I'd only use it if I had to work with a
| bright window or other lighting source behind me. If you
| go to an Apple store you can A/B test glossy vs. nano-
| texture and glossy wins for me.
|
| OLED glossy on the iPad Pro is even better.
| javier2 wrote:
| Yeah, what on earth. Go back to one of these old
| displays, I guarantee you want to gouge your eyes out at
| how terrible they are. 2006 should put you firmly in 720p
| land.
| brians wrote:
| We have different eyes and different purposes, I think.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get
| external reflections
|
| This is nearly my preferred setup, only I have wall lights
| on the wall behind the monitors so it's not truly a dark
| room (which is horrible for your eyes). No over head lights
| allowed on while I'm at the keyboard.
| nine_k wrote:
| Good for you! Not as good for a typical office though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Well, I WFH, so of course. Yet another reason RTO is a no
| go
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Just make sure to not wear glasses or white clothes.
| boredtofears wrote:
| Both 4k and 120hz were very noticeable improvements imo.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| The 2006 would probably have had 1080ish resolution. I
| think the GP's point is that at higher resolutions, matte
| has tended to have the issues they cited.
|
| I am with you in preferring matte. For me, mostly because
| of reflections on glossy screens.
| wtallis wrote:
| Even at ~100 dpi, the grainy character of matte coatings
| from that era was noticeable; my 2006 iMac and a Dell
| Ultrasharp from a few years later were both unmistakably
| grainy in a way that glossy displays are not. At the
| time, the matte coatings were an acceptable tradeoff and
| the best overall choice for many users and usage
| scenarios. But I can imagine they would have been quite
| problematic when we jumped to 200+ dpi.
| charlie0 wrote:
| That's what Lunar is for. Just bump up the brightness to
| HDR levels. Helps a lot with the glare, but will take a
| bite out of the battery life.
| jasomill wrote:
| I still have my 2011 17" MacBook Pro, built to order with
| pretty much every available option available at the time,
| including the matte screen.
|
| While it serves a useful purpose by diffusing unavoidable
| point light sources in uncontrolled environments, it's
| honestly not much of an improvement over its glossy
| contemporaries in sunlight and other brightly-lit
| environments, as diffusing already diffuse reflections has
| little effect.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I have a 2013 MBP retina with glossy screen and a 2020 HP
| with a matte screen.
|
| What I've found, is that inside, the HP is much better at
| handling reflections. However, outside, the screen gets
| washed out and is next to unusable. Whereas on the MBP, I
| can usually find an angle where reflections don't bother
| me and I can spend hours using it.
| scoodah wrote:
| The difference between matte and glossy displays in regards
| to their contrast and clarity is absolutely noticeable to
| the naked eye.
| thordenmark wrote:
| For professional graphic designers, cinematographers,
| photographers, and illustrators these subtleties in the
| screen is a big deal.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Your 2006 MacBook was pre-retina, a.k.a. High-resolution,
| displays though. Any kind of smearing effect probably
| improved the perception of the image because it masked the
| very visible pixels in the LCD
| waldothedog wrote:
| I also was matte in 06, and had that machine for 9 years
| (until it was stolen :/). Only option was glossy for my
| replacement, I was devastated. A few machines later now, I
| can't imagine going back.
| Zanfa wrote:
| I have the last gen 27" 5k iMac with nano texture as my
| primary monitor these days and you can immediately tell the
| difference between image quality, compared to a glossy
| MacBook pro. Don't get me wrong, it's by far the best
| quality matte finish I've ever seen and I would buy it
| again, because it works great in a room with south-facing
| windows, but it definitely affects the overall image
| quality noticeably.
| esseph wrote:
| There is a large visual difference between 60hz/120-144hz.
| Keyframe wrote:
| You make it sound like what they, according to you, tried to
| do was a success. One look at nano texture screen is enough
| for a resounding no.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| > High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use
| even in full daylight...
|
| Not my experience in lit environments. Looking at a mirror-
| like surface trying to distinguish content from reflections
| is exhausting.
|
| Unless I blast my eyes at full brightness which is more
| exhausting.
| christophilus wrote:
| To each their own. Matte screens always have a massive
| smudge in bright light and look terrible and grainy in the
| dark. I can't stand them.
| amluto wrote:
| All of what you say is kind of sort of true in the sense
| that, if you are in a room with lots of off-axis light
| hitting your screen and darkness behind you and you yourself
| are not brightly lit, then the glossy screen is better. And
| the glossy screen is certainly _sharper_.
|
| But if there's a window or something bright behind you, the
| specular reflection from the glossy and generally not anti
| reflective coated screen can be so bright and so full of high
| frequency details that it almost completely obscures the
| image.
|
| And since I might be trying to work involving text in a cafe
| as opposed to doing detailed artistic work in a studio, I
| would _much_ prefer the matte surface.
| lobochrome wrote:
| These AI comments suck. I mean sure. It's probably true. But
| the pollution of our social interactions with slop is so
| icky.
|
| I receive these highly polished emails from people and am
| just annoyed. Do you expect me to answer your robot?!
|
| Maybe there needs to be a bad style minimum for a forum in
| the future. Only human imperfections allowed.
|
| Ok. Of topic maybe.
|
| I love the Nano texture displays. And the glossy glass ones
| were also great and the best ones out there.
| galagawinkle489 wrote:
| It is well written and that makes you think it was written
| by AI? AI doesn't write as well as that anyway.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Hi! I don't think I have any way of convincing you, but I'm
| not an AI. Also, randomly accusing people of being an AI is
| fairly offensive, in case that's not obvious.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I have a feeling that you've never actually seen a matte
| screen.
| cycomanic wrote:
| If all that is true, why do professional photography monitors
| pretty much exclusively have matte finishes. Same for monitor
| used by video, CAD or 3d professionals.
|
| You guys need to stop reading apple advertisement material
| and take it for gospel just because it has some fancy
| scientific words in it.
| zenmac wrote:
| Matte is always being the fancier option in Photography
| paper, glossy photograph just looks cheap.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Interesting, given that in the older days of analog dark
| room development, you had to use a special kind of paper
| and heat-press it against a polished surface when drying
| to get a glossy photo.
|
| I always thought matte photos were more readable, but
| glossy used to be more wow and have "deeper blacks".
| aqula wrote:
| Is there any write up on the tech behind nano texture? What
| makes them better than traditional matte screens?
| shuckles wrote:
| It's classic Apple commenter not know about Apple. They offered
| matte display upgrades to the MacBook Pro almost 20 years ago.
| The current glossy black display only became a product line
| wide choice with the retina displays in 2012, likely because
| they didn't prioritize getting an appropriate matte glass
| finish on the retina screens due to low demand.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Are you an Apple commenter?
| iAMkenough wrote:
| I can make the same argument about you. Matte display was the
| standard prior to Unibody MacBook Pros in 2008.
|
| Glossy was an available option, but not the product line wide
| choice.
|
| The top of the line Late 2008 MacBook Pro (not Unibody)
| included: > An antiglare CCFL-backlit 17" widescreen
| 1680x1050 active-matrix display (a glossy display was offered
| via build-to-order at no extra cost, and a higher resolution
| LED-backlit 1920x1200 display also was offered for an extra
| US$100).
|
| https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook.
| ..
| tomcam wrote:
| Downvoted for the unhelpful first sentence.
| inference-god wrote:
| As someone who buys and likes Apple stuff, I agree, it's a
| signature move from them.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They are really good at selling a small quantitative
| improvement that causes them to start using something, as a new
| type of thing going from impossible to possible. As if the tech
| didn't just didn't exist before Apple started using it.
|
| It is probably a pretty good screen, though.
|
| I don't really like Apple overall. But, to some extent, it's
| like... well, maybe that's a good way of selling incremental
| engineering improvements.
| lapcat wrote:
| > It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that
| glossy screens were the best option
|
| I don't recall Apple ever "insisting" anything about glossy vs.
| matte. They simply eliminated the matte option without comment,
| and finally brought it back many years later.
|
| If you have a reference to a public statement from Apple
| defending the elimination of the matte option, I'd like to see
| it.
|
| To be clear, I've been complaining about glossy Macs ever since
| matte was eliminated, and I too purchased an M4 MacBook Pro
| soon after it was available.
| dbbk wrote:
| The "matte" options also are totally different approaches,
| different quality levels. They're not the same product.
| kergonath wrote:
| > They simply eliminated the matte option without comment,
| and finally brought it back many years later.
|
| Wasn't the matte option that disappeared just then removing
| the glass in front of the screen? I seem to remember that (my
| MBP from that time was glossy).
|
| The nano textured coating they are using now is quite complex
| and I am not quite sure it was applicable at such scales
| cheaply enough back in 2015.
| lapcat wrote:
| The PowerBook and the first MacBook Pro were only matte.
|
| A glossy option was introduced in 2006, but the MacBook Pro
| was still matte by default.
|
| In 2008, the MacBook Pro case was redesigned, and then the
| display situation changed significantly.
| bickfordb wrote:
| I don't think this is exactly accurate. The matte was a
| ~$80 upgrade option after they released the glossy. I
| definitely preferred the matte screens and still do. For
| coding reducing glare in uncontrolled environments is way
| more important to me than color fidelity, but to each
| their own.
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| > "...featuring the Intel Core Duo processor and a gorgeous
| new 13-inch glossy widescreen display..."
|
| > "...the MacBook provides incredibly crisp images with
| richer colors, deeper blacks and significantly greater
| contrast..."
|
| This is positioning for glossy being superior.
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2006/05/16Apple-Unveils-
| New-M...
| galagawinkle489 wrote:
| In one quote they used glossy to describe it. How does that
| mean they said that glossiness made it better?
|
| The other quote is just a list of ways in which the screen
| is better.
|
| It is YOU that is conflating these and saying that this
| list of improvements is down to glossiness, not Apple.
| lapcat wrote:
| It's indisputable that glossy displays have advantages over
| matte displays. It's also indisputable that matte displays
| have advantages over glossy displays, most importantly,
| fewer reflections of ambient light. The choice is a
| tradeoff.
|
| A sentence in a PR that highlights an indisputable
| advantage of a glossy display does not position glossy as
| being superior overall but merely superior in the respects
| mentioned, which is not controversial.
|
| Moreover, Apple continued to offer a matte display in the
| MacBook Pro for years after that PR, so why would they sell
| an "inferior" option?
| mdasen wrote:
| Apple was actually late to the glossy display party. HP and
| Dell moved to them a few years before Apple. I don't think
| Apple was "insisting" on them, but rather following an industry
| trend that they were late to.
| a-dub wrote:
| i recently worked with a macbook pro and it caused
| uncomfortable feelings of eyestrain. i had some app that was
| supposed to disable the temporal dithering but i'm not sure if
| it helped. i'm curious if there's anyone else on here like me
| who has experienced eyestrain with macbooks where the nano
| texture display has helped.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It's certainly on brand for Apple to face widespread criticism
| in the past for having matte screens as the default (computer
| magazines of the day found that matte finishes made screens too
| dim) only to face renewed criticism for dropping the thing they
| were previously criticized for.
| tymscar wrote:
| If anything, Apple was right back then. Glossy has so many
| benefits for the places where you'd use a computer, it's not
| even close. Having the option to pay premium for those few that
| work in environments where matte helps them makes sense. I'd
| pay money for my display to not be matte.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| We used to sell conversion kits to shoehorn a pixel qi display
| into the thinkpad x230. Since apple has put in 1,000nit displays
| on the pros, we don't bother anymore. The nano texture sold me
| and it performs wonderfully outdoors. I hate giving apple money
| but here I am.
| lisbbb wrote:
| It's because Apple sucks the least. They still suck, though.
| They could build decent computers that are upgradeable, but
| they refuse because they want your $$$$ in large amounts.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Honestly I hate giving money to Lenovo, they're one of the
| worst companies I've had to deal with at least when it comes to
| support.
| koiueo wrote:
| +1 to that. Simply horrendous post-purchase support. Company
| representatives on all levels, from a simple technician to
| head of Linux support department, will be lying straight in
| your face, just to scam a few thousands bucks out of you.
|
| But their keyboards are still the best, and trackpoint is
| unmatched. As soon as System76 or Framework or any other
| vendor offer that, I'm giving them my money.
| nomilk wrote:
| > The nano texture display is great at reducing reflections. I
| could immediately see the difference when placing two laptops
| side by side: The bright Apple Store lights showed up very
| prominently on the normal display, and were almost not visible at
| all on the nano texture display.
|
| This is a quiet boon for those who enjoy working outdoors but
| find the sun/brightness a problem.
| 13415 wrote:
| After 18 years of Mac-abstinence, I just bought a MacBook Air and
| realized there is apparently no way to change the App Store
| language without changing region and payment method. WTF? That
| seems like the most basic thing one could imagine. What has
| happened to Apple?
| zrm wrote:
| That seems like classic Apple, really.
| Aloisius wrote:
| I was able to switch the App Store language from English to
| Spanish by changing my primary language in System Settings >
| Language & Region > Preferred Languages.
|
| It didn't require me to switch my region or payment method.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Why did you think Apple was user friendly or flexible...it's
| the Apple way or the highway. Most only stick around because of
| the currently superior hardware
| gorgoiler wrote:
| 20 years ago I bought a G3 iBook because the hardware was lovely
| and the system was supported perfectly by stock Debian woody.
| (Hands up if you remember having to bless your laptop with "holy
| penguin pee", part of the output of the yaboot bootloader used in
| PowerPC systems!)
|
| Times changed and the best hardware for me right now is a Dell
| XPS from the model lines a few years back that looked like an
| aluminum sandwich with a black plastic filling. These machines
| are fantastic but (1) no OLED, (2) now high speed refresh rate,
| and (3) the keyboard isn't great.
|
| Could this modern Apple hardware bring me back to Free OS on
| pretty hardware, or is there something else I should try?
| dunham wrote:
| I bought one of those iBooks for Debian linux, but I found the
| resolution was a bit small for X. At the time, I had a thing
| for non-intel architectures. Prior to that, I had done a lot of
| work packaging up Debian for Sparc machines. I had access to a
| wide variety of Sun workstations at my job as a sysadmin at a
| university.
| jitl wrote:
| Asahi (Linux) lags quite far behind the latest Apple hardware
| release. If you want the Linux experience on Apple hardware, I
| think the best move is full-screen VM. Performance of that is
| more than good enough, but it does mean you are running a full
| non-free software stack to get to your free software VM.
| dr_pardee wrote:
| > I still don't like macOS and would prefer to run Linux on this
| laptop. But Asahi Linux still needs some work before it's usable
| for me (I need external display output, and M4 support). This
| doesn't bother me too much, though, as I don't use this computer
| for serious work.
|
| "I don't use this computer for serious work." Dropped $3K on MBP
| to play around with. Definitely should have gotten MBA
| criddell wrote:
| If you are going to start making a list of expensive hobbies,
| $3K for a computer isn't going to be anywhere near the top of
| the list.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think it actually would be quite near the top, in terms of
| ranking. Most hobbies are a lot cheaper.
|
| Of course, not near the top in terms of money because there
| are a few hobbies that cost vastly more.
| brulard wrote:
| What do you mean "in terms of ranking" vs "in terms of
| money"?
| IshKebab wrote:
| I mean if you ranked all the hobbies in terms of cost,
| casually spending $3k on a laptop would be near the top
| of the list. But there are a small number of hobbies that
| are vastly more expensive.
|
| The distribution is highly skewed. Like wealth. The 99th
| percentile are near the top in rank (by definition) but
| nowhere near the top in absolute terms.
| mingus88 wrote:
| There's some nuance to it.
|
| Judging by the authors preference for Linux, I'm guessing
| this hobby has some professional applications as well.
|
| $3k is the price of a very nice guitar, but I am not
| about to casually shell out that money every few years.
|
| However, I earn my wage using a computer, so it's a lot
| easier to justify staying relatively current on specs.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| I interpreted it as: if you include all hobbies and games
| made by humans in history, I'm pretty sure most of them
| involve a set of cards made of paper, some others
| involving wooden figurines (chess, checkers) or even
| drawing on dirt with a stick.
|
| A computer is many, many orders of magnitude more complex
| and expensive than that.
|
| This isn't said with the intention to demonize expensive
| hobbies if no one is harmed because of it.
|
| But I do sometimes wonder if my hobbies are too dependent
| of a power plug. Even reading, which I do with a
| e-reader.
| brulard wrote:
| I can not think of many hobbies which are less expensive
| if you are serious about them. Some hobbies around me,
| where $3000 wouldn't get you far: Motorcycles, cars,
| cycling, collecting anything, woodworking, machining,
| music making, traveling, horses,...
| IshKebab wrote:
| I can think of dozens. Running, dance, knitting,
| painting, woodworking (you can go very far for much less
| than $3k), archery, chess, board games, drawing,
| painting, brewing, darts, cycling, etc. etc.
|
| Obviously you _can_ spend pretty much any amount of money
| on those if you want (if you are "serious" about it) but
| you don't have to and most people don't. Also he said
| this $3k expenditure wasn't for serious work.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Some of those, like horses, are 1% hobbies. But many of
| the others can be done very affordably. Buying used
| equipment, learning from YouTube and online resources,
| starting small and scaling gradually make most of those
| hobbies accessible at a fraction of the cost.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The cycling industry does a hard work making sure people
| think they need expensive bicycles but you can perfectly
| enjoycycling as a hobby without spending a fortune on it.
|
| And in contradiction to computers, a bicycle from 40
| years ago still does the same job as it did at the time,
| there is no software making it incompatible and it
| doesn't feel slower than the more modern stuff. All you
| need is a set of brake pads, cables, tires, chain and
| cassette every once in a while. All these consumables are
| fairly cheap if you aren't chasing the newest/highest end
| tech and stick to 2x9 / 2x10 speed transmissions.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Median vs mean, essentially, is how I read it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just off the top of my head in hobbies that I've been
| in/around that this $3k would be a nothing burger:
| photography, wood working, grease monkey, cycling, gun
| collecting, antiquing, recreational substances...
| bdangubic wrote:
| I actually can't think of _one_ hobby that costs less
| than $3k
| azundo wrote:
| For me the only one would be sketching/painting. But I
| agree with the point in general, most hobbies cost a lot.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| A lot of things are cheap to taste -- a second hand bike
| and some $200 running shoes and you're training for a
| triathlon. Or a makerspace membership and you're now
| sewing or doing 3d printing.
|
| It's once you get "serious" and need to have your own
| equipment that all these things get real. Or in the case
| of things like social dance, you want to take time off
| with and travel further and further away to attend pricey
| exchanges and camps.
| schrijver wrote:
| It's perfectly possible to enjoy hobbies deeply without
| getting "serious" in the way you describe.
|
| I've taken my 10 euro dance classes for years without
| feeling the necessity of pricey exchanges and camps.
|
| My neighbour goes to the park many evenings to play
| petanque, doesn't cost him anything.
|
| A couple I'm friends with goes on day hikes where they do
| bird watching--maybe they bought a nice pair of
| binoculars once? Another couple likes to lay jigsaw
| puzzles together, not exactly breaking the bank!
|
| My sister is learning Finnish because she never learned a
| non indo-european language. She bought a book.
|
| I would wager most people's hobbies are low key like this
| because either they don't have disposable income to spend
| on them, or they don't want too!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Absolutely yeah, and regardless of whether it ends up
| eventually being expensive, I think part of what I'm
| saying is that it is important to know how to _at least
| start_ something cheaply.
|
| I get very frustrated with the kind of people who see one
| tiktok about a thing and suddenly feel like they need to
| spend $3k to pursue whatever their new passion is.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| cross training ?
| dylan604 wrote:
| No, if cross training qualified, those in cross training
| would be sure to tell you they did cross training and go
| into details about it
| schrijver wrote:
| Knitting / crocheting / quilting / embroidering? Drawing
| / painting / calligraphy? Singing in a choir? Creative
| writing / journaling / blogging? Solving crossword
| puzzles? Bird watching? Day hikes? Reading? Visiting
| museums? Learning about history / philosophy / art /
| whatever? Learning a language? Taking dance classes?
| Playing chess or petanque or any other game that doesn't
| require expensive gear? Or most sports?
| mikelevins wrote:
| Besides programming, my hobbies are writing stories,
| writing and recording songs, drawing, and painting. None
| of them needs to cost anywhere near $3000. Any of them
| _can_ cost as much as you want.
|
| Take the music hobby as an example. I have several
| expensive guitars now, but in the first 20 years of that
| hobby I probably spent under $1000 on guitars and related
| gear the entire time.
| whatevaa wrote:
| Running. You only need good shoes, really. Words from
| coworker running marathons.
| bgarbiak wrote:
| You can absolutely be a hobbyist photographer for a
| fraction of $3k. A hobbyist lens collector is a different
| story.
| blub wrote:
| Well, there's hobbies and there's a buying addiction that
| comes with a hobby.
|
| In many areas there's a tendency to overdo it with tools,
| gadgets and also to compensate for lack of skill with
| more gadgets. I do woodworking for example and my total
| spend for industrial vacuum, different types of power and
| hand tools, work bench, clamps, etc probably comes to
| around a few thousand EUR. Mine is a really good set-up
| for a hobby, but I still don't have any stationary
| machines or fancy separate work area or room. I bought
| everything over the years and I only buy brand-name. My
| point is, this is actually a lot of money _especially_ if
| spent as lump sum and not at all a "nothing-burger".
| mr_toad wrote:
| > photography, wood working, grease monkey, cycling, gun
| collecting, antiquing, recreational substances
|
| Yacht owner says 'hold my beer'.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Fiberglass sailboats last forever and the hobby is dying
| as people age out of it. I'm in the sailing community and
| get offered nice free boats in usable condition every
| year, but already have 2 so refuse any more. This year
| alone I've turned down both a 40ft and a 23ft free boats
| from 80-90 year old friends that aged out. Parts are
| expensive, but if you can do repairs yourself, you can
| absolutely own a pretty nice sailboat for about what it
| costs for a new apple laptop. I paid $1800 at auction for
| my most recent sailboat and it is only 7 years old, and
| needed nothing. Did an overnight trip on it recently.
|
| I want to find a way to revive the hobby by showing
| younger people short on money that they can get into
| sailing for less than they already spend on much less
| rewarding stuff like app subscriptions and smartphones.
| Onavo wrote:
| Try general aviation as a hobby. It will be eye opening
| eastbound wrote:
| Thinking it's a hobby is an american thing. I've never
| met anyone who do it, but for Kobe Bryant, Harrisson
| Ford, Tom Cruise it seems normal.
|
| Most people save $400 per month tops, that they spend on
| holidays.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's a doable common hobby for middle class Americans. I
| grew up in a rural area with a dirt airstrip and everyone
| owned planes- even people that could barely afford a
| reliable used car. You can sometimes find something like
| an old Cessna for about $20k, and if you're willing to do
| "experimental" planes that you fix yourself, sometimes
| just a few $k. Like anything, if you're an insider in the
| community you can get good deals, sometimes even free
| from friends that age out, etc.
|
| Many universities in rural areas have student clubs that
| offer lessons and rent club owned planes for cheap.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > even people that could barely afford a reliable used
| car. You can sometimes find something like an old Cessna
| for about $20k,
|
| Not sure what you call a "reliable used car". My low
| mileage for its age 2006 Mercedes B200 costed me 5.5kEUR
| for instance. A car doesn't have to cost a lot to be
| reliable.
|
| Around me $20k is an expensive price for a car and most
| people buy second hand +20y old cars they buy for less
| than 5kEUR.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Cultural attitudes about that vary a lot by locale I
| think. That is not how most American consumers think, at
| least where I live... people largely consider older cars,
| especially German ones to be too unreliable to count on
| and they are (wrongly) believed to be so expensive to
| maintain that it will cost more than a new car- so
| they're categorically ruled out. Even people that can
| barely afford food or housing will often take out a loan
| for a new or nearly new car under the idea that they
| won't get to work consistently otherwise.
|
| I am also into older cars and can get a reliable car for
| a few hundred dollars, but I would never be able to
| convince anyone else I know that it is an option. So yea,
| you can get a reliable car for a lot less than a cheap
| airplane only if you don't have some irrational bias
| against older cars.
| nradov wrote:
| It's sad that more countries outside of North America
| haven't actively developed their general aviation
| industries. It's never going to be cheap (or safe) but
| there's no good reason to impose the high taxes and
| regulatory constraints that keep it should be out of
| reach from regular upper-middle class people in many
| countries.
| criddell wrote:
| > Most hobbies are a lot cheaper.
|
| Sure, but I did specify _expensive_ hobbies.
| asdff wrote:
| The type of person shelling out 3k for a computer is not
| running it until the wheels come off.
| brailsafe wrote:
| What does the purchase price have to do with it? Seems like
| it would entirely depend on circumstances and constraints,
| rather than cost, how long someone would run something
| asdff wrote:
| Tells me they are price insensitive and probably get a
| new computer every couple of years.
| biinjo wrote:
| That reasoning does not make any sense. I spend $3-4k on
| a MBP and run it till it fall apart, usually 5-7 years
| later.
| RossBencina wrote:
| I reckon it makes some sense _for Apple users_. You have
| to be willing (and financially able) to upgrade when
| Apple says. Apple forcefully obsoletes their products way
| too quickly to be a viable option if you care about
| longevity[0]. I have five excellent-condition still-
| perfectly-working Apple products next to me, none of
| which have current operating system support from Apple.
|
| [0] EDIT: for reference, my previous ThinkPad lasted me
| 14 years.
| tuyiown wrote:
| 14 years as your main driver ? Because that what we're
| talking about.
| Too wrote:
| 14 is a indeed very long. Let's instead assume 12, it's
| 2013 and you got a top specced T440 with 4th gen i7.
| That's actually not bad and the build quality is like a
| tank as all Thinkpads. Nothing I would use as daily
| driver myself but having used many other thinkpads of
| that generation I can see why others are still getting by
| with it today.
|
| Since we are talking about OS support. 4th gen Intel
| isn't supported by Windows 11, so you'd have to upgrade
| to Linux.
| gcr wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how much of that thinkpad were you able
| to upgrade? Could that be the difference between 5 and 14
| years here?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It makes sense for some people, and doesn't for others.
| Not particularly surprising or insightful.
| 45764986 wrote:
| >I have five excellent-condition still-perfectly-working
| Apple products next to me, none of which have current
| operating system support from Apple.
|
| If they're working perfectly, why does it matter if they
| have current operating support? It doesn't seem like
| you're dependent on Apple.
| kace91 wrote:
| Software drops support for certain OS versions even if
| the device still can run it.
|
| The first iPad Pro can't run adobe products for example.
|
| The Mac is a bit more resilient to this, but it's still
| worrying as yearly improvements become subtler.
| timothyduong wrote:
| I have the M1 Max. It's still going hard. Not planning to
| replace it anytime soon.
| airstrike wrote:
| I have an M2 Ultra. I don't see myself getting rid of it
| for another 5 years at least.
| demiters wrote:
| M2 here also, still flies for cross platform mobile
| development. The 250GB storage space is a bit tight
| without external storage but my dev environment is lean
| and purges caches every day so I manage easily.
| gcr wrote:
| Bullshit. I shelled $3k for my MBP M1 back in 2021 and I
| intend to use it until I can't anymore.
|
| It depends on the person and the use case. Different
| personalities etc
| omni wrote:
| That's not particularly rational given how quickly
| computers progress in both performance and cost, a
| current-gen $1k Macbook Air will run circles around your
| M1. You'd probably be much better off spending the same
| amount of money on cheaper machines with a more frequent
| upgrade cadence. And you can always sell your old ones on
| eBay or something.
| jerojero wrote:
| i like using computers until they break on me, i've never
| really felt (for the usage i give my macbook) that it is
| lacking in power. Even after, what, 5 years?
|
| i think i'll be upgrading in the next 2 or maybe 3 years
| if apple puts OLED screens on their new machines as it is
| rumored.
| gcr wrote:
| Respectfully, this is also bullshit for my use case. For
| me, the M1 purchase was a step up compared to Intel; the
| rest is diminishing returns for now.
|
| It's also not true if you care about certain workloads
| like LLM performance. My biggest concern for example is
| memory size and bandwidth, and older chips compare quite
| favorably to new chips where "GPU VRAM size" now
| differentiates the premium market and becomes a further
| upsell, making it less cost-effective. :( I can justify
| $3k for "run a small LLM on my laptop for my job as ML
| researcher," but I still can't justify $10k for "run a
| larger model on my Mac Studio"
|
| See https://github.com/ggml-
| org/llama.cpp/discussions/4167#discu...
| treesknees wrote:
| There are other factors to consider such as screen size,
| storage and RAM, connectivity and ports, active versus
| passive cooling (thermal throttling), and speaker
| quality. Additionally, the M1 Pro GPU benchmarks still
| outperform the latest M4 Air.
|
| For example if I spec out a 13" M4 MBA to match my
| current 14" M1 Pro MBP, which with tax came to ~$3k in
| 2021 (32GB RAM, 1TB storage), that $1k MBA ends up being
| ~$1900. Now that more frequent upgrade cadence doesn't
| make as much sense financially. After one purchase and
| one upgrade, you've exceeded the cost of the M1 Pro MBP
| purchase.
|
| Overall I don't disagree with your sentiment, especially
| for more casual use cases, but progress will never stop.
| There will always be a newer laptop with better specs
| coming out. I personally would rather beef up a machine
| and then drive it until it dies or can no longer perform
| the tasks I need it to.
| jhbadger wrote:
| I don't think you can say that -- I paid about that for my
| 2021 M1 Max with 64GB and I'm still using it four years
| later as my main machine. There's an argument to be made to
| buy an expensive computer every 5 years or so rather than a
| cheaper one that you need to replace every 2 years because
| it's become unbearably slow.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| My laptop is still a 2012 MBP. Granted I don't use a
| laptop as my main computer, I use a hackintosh desktop. I
| might finally buy a new laptop in 2026, 14 years is not
| bad. If my new laptop can last that long I see no problem
| maxing out the specs at time of purchase.
| jasomill wrote:
| Same here: I paid about twice as much for my 2013 Mac Pro
| that I'll probably keep using until I replace it with an
| M5 Mac Studio at some point next year, which I'll then
| plan to use for at least 5 years.
|
| As for camera lenses, I expect my collection of manual
| focus F-mount Zeiss primes to have a longer useful life
| than their owner.
| marcogarces wrote:
| same here; I bought a M2 Max with 96GB of RAM almost 3
| years ago, for EUR4K, but a client paid half of it for a
| 1 year retainer. This machine is still the best thing
| i've worked with, and I have zero intentions of switching
| this machine anytime soon (i'll probably need to replace
| it's battery in the future). Rather keep the same machine
| for 5 or 6 years than to buy a crappier one every 2 years
| ekianjo wrote:
| > $3K for a computer isn't going to be anywhere near the top
| of the list.
|
| That says a lot about the community you live in.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| That they've worked hard to be able to afford nice things?
| What do you think it says, exactly? This is a pretty
| irritating comment.
| nine_k wrote:
| Worked hard, won a lottery, whatever. It mostly says that
| these are people with tens of thousands to burn on fun
| stuff, and such people are a rather narrow slice of the
| population. There's nothing bad about that, it's just a
| rather niche community, whose opinions may not be very
| relevant for the large majority of people outside that
| niche.
| fragmede wrote:
| HN _is_ that niche community though. HN is a forum
| targeting a niche community that skews technical no
| matter where someone is physically from, and that
| community skews relatively rich. Concern trolling that
| there are starving kids in Africa when there are literal
| billionaires posting here; I mean sure, I 'm not saying
| we shouldn't say something for fear of their feelings.
| Nor am I saying that everyone here must be rich in order
| to comment her. Just that some members of the niche
| community can recognize are inordinately rich.
| Advertising eg the Volonaut here will likely generate a
| couple of sales, and if you thought a $3k laptop was a
| lot, definitely don't look that one up.
| threemux wrote:
| Seriously. Stapelberg is a talented guy that's done well
| for himself, why can't he have nice things if he wants
| them?
| ekianjo wrote:
| That was not a judgment, good or bad. Simply an
| observation.
| throw93944i48 wrote:
| The "mac community" is even worse. I recently spend $4k on
| linux laptop, and I get endless criticism, that it is "too
| expensive" for a "windows pc". I need spec for my work, and
| comparable mac is 4x more expensive!
| tuyiown wrote:
| Maxed out a mbp, I couldn't get more than a bit than 8k.
| And comparable is probably generous.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Is this 16,000 dollar laptop in the room with us now?
| infofarmer wrote:
| to be pedantic, a maxed out MBP is 90200 BRL in Brazil
| now before AC+ and software, around 16777 USD
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| just skip going out to lunch once and eat a turkey sandwich
| instead /s
| technothrasher wrote:
| This whole discussion is weird. For the majority of the
| world's population, dropping $3K on a computer is a non-
| starter, if even possible. Over six hundred million people
| cannot even afford proper food and shelter. But there are
| also sixty-two million millionaires in the world. So there
| are a large number of people who can buy a MBP without even
| blinking. We've just discovered income disparity. What the
| heck does that obvious truth have to add to a review of a
| MBP?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| It's not the absolute expense, it's the delta over what else
| would have worked just as well.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Just wait until they see the price of of a 300/2.8 lens or
| quantum-tuned rocks to isolate power cables from the floor.
| bix6 wrote:
| Lmao plus MBA works great for relatively serious work. I was
| hesitant to switch from MBP but the M1 air almost never lets me
| down.
| mastax wrote:
| He lives in Switzerland. $3K barely pays for a lunch and an
| espresso.
| philsnow wrote:
| There's a reason the Zurich airport has a vending machine
| that sells slips of gold, platinum, and palladium
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm not sure what the actual reason is, but my first
| instinct is "tax evasion".
| denysvitali wrote:
| Jokes aside, electronics is way cheaper here (also thanks to
| a relatively low VAT) than in most countries - although Apple
| keeps their prices pretty much the same across the world.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Computers are actually cheap as far as Swiss taxes go (I
| bought my first MacBook Pro when intel came out at EPFL). I'm
| sure they got their computer for about the same price as you
| could get it in Hong Kong. But ya, food, rent, and services
| are pricey in Switzerland, even if you are just grabbing a
| croissant at coop.
| e12e wrote:
| This is funny because MBA could mean two things.
| stodor89 wrote:
| MBAs typically use MBAs.
| kome wrote:
| i'll never understand picky preferences about monitors... i still
| use an LG flatron wide that's old enough to vote... and when i
| slack at the apple store, it's not like i notice some life-or-
| death difference. a monitor is a monitor.
|
| ok, i guess for graphic designers it might matter more?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Or people who read text.
| skylurk wrote:
| Some old LCD displays were quite crisp. Sure, you can see
| individual pixels. The mouse tail has a clear zig-zag. But I
| find these nice on the eyes in their own way. I suspect
| because eyes autofocus more easily.
|
| New super high-res displays are also nice on my eyes. The
| displays in between, those from the last decade or so, have
| been hit or miss for me.
| kome wrote:
| that's me, and it really doesn't matter
| blindriver wrote:
| I still have a 2019 MacBook Pro with the non-butterfly keyboard
| and escape key (unfortunately still the Touch Bar).
|
| It's still a great laptop except the battery lasts maybe 75 mins.
| I just keep it plugged in but despite the fact it's 6 years old I
| don't notice any problems with it.
|
| I'm tempted to buy an M4 laptop just because it's "new" and
| "faster" but then I ask myself Why? It's the same thing with my
| iPhone. Until my laptop dies or there is something functional
| that I can't do with my old laptop I'm going to keep using it.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I have an M1 air that still lasts 7-8 hours on one charge. It's
| very different than the Intel battery life which I had 5 or 7
| machines over the years.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| depends on use, I had the same laptop but the speed increase
| when I upgraded to an M3 was easily worth it
| lisbbb wrote:
| I couldn't really trust the author of the review after he
| established his preference for "quiet computers" having no
| cooling slots or whatever he called them. Okay, fine, you're
| placing aesthetics above actual performance, then. The Pro
| laptops are the only ones viable for any really hardcore work
| because if you push the Air too hard it is going to just slow
| down in order to stay cool and that's not what you want if you
| are doing graphics work or in my case, I was running a bunch of
| containers in K8s. I never bought an Air because it was too
| similar to an iPad.
|
| The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered
| in RAM and non-upgradeable storage. Apple is still the best thing
| going for doing most pro development work, but it's just so
| irritating that they shit on us like this. I did buy an M4 Mini
| and expanded it some. My 2019 MB Pro is siting here on the desk,
| mostly unused these days. The Intel Macs are basically dead now--
| still great computers, but no longer desirable. My daughter is
| doing Graphic Arts in college and is using another 2019 Pro for
| that. I've used Macs continuously since at least 2014.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| >The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is
| soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage.
|
| Isn't the 'soldered-in' RAM and storage fundamental to the
| M-series architecture? It's not like there's a board with
| individual chips sitting in it for the RAM and storage, that
| could potentially have been 'popped out' if they weren't
| soldered in. It's all one giant 'chip' now.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| There are separate chips.
|
| But just like Strix Halo, they have to be soldered. There's
| no way to reach the signal integrity required with
| connectors.
| benoau wrote:
| I've heard many people saying CAMM2 solves this.
| wtallis wrote:
| We're still waiting to see any CAMM-style memory module
| show up in a mass market product _at any speed_ , instead
| of merely getting press coverage where the number of
| articles written seems to outnumber the number of laptops
| actually built and shipped. But even if you are willing
| to take the examples thus far seriously as real products,
| they haven't come close to matching the speed of soldered
| LPDDR.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I was considering an LPCAMM2-fitted Thinkpad. I was
| eyeing to buy one with less memory and then buy a 96GB
| module to upgrade it. However, the module was nowhere to
| be found in stock, and where it was found, it was priced
| almost like the whole laptop.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| CAMM is still less effective than in-package RAM bundled
| with your CPU. The Framework folks looked into using CAMM
| for their recent AMD APU-based desktop and it was a no
| go.
| zero_bias wrote:
| No, M series is a system on chip (SoC), that's why it's
| able to run local LLM models in a range impossible for
| other laptop brands: VRAM == RAM, unified shared memory at
| max speed for both CPU and GPU
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Strix Halo has the same unified RAM with no separation.
|
| Sadly it's not in many laptops, probably the easiest way
| to obtain it is in the Framework Desktop or a mini pc.
| quitit wrote:
| An frequently overlooked point is the display brightness. The pro
| models offer 1600 nits peak brightness, which makes these good
| units for looking at HDR content, especially if you like to take
| photos or edit videos. Meanwhile the Air maxes out at 500 nits,
| so the effect and contrast is drastically reduced for those
| models.
| nwienert wrote:
| Not just that but you can use Brightentosh to force it on.
|
| I live in a sunny place with big windows and basically use it
| all day every day. When it turns off my screen feels broken I
| so prefer the brightness.
| sufehmi wrote:
| Hi thank you so much ! I live in the tropics and often works
| outdoor and THIS is a lifesaver !!
|
| Thanks again!
|
| https://www.brightintosh.de/
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Normal content is still limited to 500 nits, and these being
| mini-LED displays, contrast is already infinite.
|
| Unless you're making Instagram content, very few photographers
| use HDR. Everything else will look the same on both screens.
| wtallis wrote:
| > and these being mini-LED displays, contrast is already
| infinite.
|
| I think you may have mixed up mini-LED backlighting with OLED
| and microLED displays. mini-LED backlights merely allow for
| better local dimming of the backlight behind an LCD, but the
| number of independently variable backlight zones is still
| orders of magnitude smaller than the number of pixels. Over
| short distances, an LCD with local dimming is still
| susceptible to all of the contrast-limiting downsides of an
| LCD with a uniform static backlight (and local dimming brings
| new challenges of its own).
|
| OLED is the mainstream display technology where individual
| pixels directly emit their own light, so you can truly have a
| completely black pixel next to a lit pixel. But there are
| still layers and coatings between the OLED and the user, so
| infinite contrast isn't actually achievable.
|
| microLED is an unsuccessful technology to provide the
| benefits of OLED without as many of the downsides (primarily,
| the uneven aging). But nobody has managed to make large
| microLED displays economically yet, and it doesn't look like
| the tech will be going mainstream anytime soon.
| RulerOf wrote:
| > but the number of independently variable backlight zones
| is still orders of magnitude smaller than the number of
| pixels
|
| The appearance of a lone mouse cursor on a black screen in
| the dark is mildly amusing for exactly this reason. You can
| watch as the ghostly halo of light follows it around the
| screen as you move the cursor.
|
| I'll upgrade my machine when they put an OLED display in
| it.
| quitit wrote:
| Normal content is 1000 nits, peak is 1600 nits.
|
| Contrast is significantly poorer on the Air display, and HDR
| is already in your own photos if you have a modern
| smartphone, so the idea that it's niche or irrelevant is a
| naive take.
|
| The perceptual difference between sdr and hdr isn't a minor
| bump, it is conspicuous and driver of realism.
|
| If one cares about the refresh rate of their screen, then
| they'd trivially notice the improvement that high nit
| displays provide.
| proee wrote:
| I was on the fence for same reason - should I get the nano
| display? I opted for the 15" MBA, and the display has been great.
| Way better than my 2019 Macbook Pro. I've had zero issues with
| glare, but I'm also in an office environment during the day and
| use it at night when home.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Same experience. I cannot consider any screen that does not have
| the nano texture coating. It is exceptional and a huge
| improvement. To the point that I actually prefer a tester Samsung
| Galaxy S25 Ultra over Apple's own iPhone display.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I may have to check out the new nano display. The old matte
| display was really a superior choice to the glossy screens of the
| past several years.
| quanto wrote:
| How is Apple's nano-textured display different from ThinkPad's
| famed matte display?
| shwaj wrote:
| The part about noticing web pages loading (at most) 8ms faster
| due to the display is total nonsense. Many can notice the
| difference between 60 and 120Hz when scrolling, but definitely
| not for a page load. That's less than 1/10th of the blink of an
| eye.
|
| If page load seems noticeably faster, it's far more likely that
| it's simply a faster machine. Or imaginary.
| yalogin wrote:
| How much of a difference would I see in compute between an M2 and
| M4 for example? Assuming it's the same RAM. Did they also make
| the gpu and neural engine that much better between the two?
| petethepig wrote:
| funny i was recently picking between a glossy and nano texture
| screen and came to the opposite conclusion -- the glossy screen's
| image was so much more crisp, and i didn't really see much
| difference in terms of reflection
| cottsak wrote:
| > I don't use this computer for serious work.
|
| Next.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Why is this notion that basically only opinions on stuff that
| you've used in a work capacity are valid so widespread here?
| msephton wrote:
| I also went for the fantastic nano texture display on my M4,
| after having glossy my M1. Very happy with the decision as I use
| the laptop in brightly lit enviroments so appreciate fewer
| reflections. Going back to a glossy display is a shock.
| zepolen wrote:
| I have done real work, using a computer 10+ hours a day on every
| ecosystem, Windows, Linux, Mac. I've used each for ~10 years a
| piece.
|
| My most recent laptop died and it really showed me what I
| appreciate in a laptop, performance, build quality, lightweight,
| good battery, low noise, good ergonomics.
|
| I was sick of the recent overheating generation of pc laptops
| that don't last more than a couple years under my usage.
|
| As a result I decided to try to switch back to a macbook after a
| decade hiatus.
|
| The hardware is good but the software is absolute garbage.
| Trialing it for a week the amount of bullshit that is MacOS was
| enough, and Asahi wasn't there yet either. Instead I decided to
| get an AMD framework laptop.
|
| Best decision ever.
|
| I have a laptop that's got great quality, can be upgraded without
| paying a $5k tax, can replace the keyboard for $100 instead of
| $700, it works with me rather than against me and my wallet.
| iammrpayments wrote:
| Which one did you buy? I'm also considering leaving mac just
| because of how slow and battery intensive the new macOS tahoe
| is.
| zepolen wrote:
| https://frame.work/gr/en/products/laptop13-diy-amd-
| ai300/con... with the AI 7 350 because I was concerned on
| heat but given the choice to buy again I'd go with the HX370.
| charlie0 wrote:
| It's always interesting to see users have somewhat strong
| opinions over fan vs fanless. I could never go Macbook Air again
| because I've been to hotter climates and do things beyond just
| using a browser and invariably the keyboard gets too warm for my
| fingertips. I need the MBPs fans and Mac Fan Control, noise be
| dammed.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Heh, matte; finally. Gloss is such a PITA if you can't control
| what's behind you, which ironically is a pretty common dev-with-
| macbook experience. Walking around to different parts of the
| office. Off-sites. Etc.
|
| I've only purchased matte screen laptops because I only use them
| for travel. Lenovo pretty much.
|
| Also prefer semi-gloss for my monitors as I work in well lit
| daylight conditions if I can help it. There have been very high
| quality semi-gloss monitors for ages now.
| jofzar wrote:
| > I don't notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers.
| However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of
| the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more
| interesting.
|
| I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me
| now and even make me a bit motion sick.
|
| I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the
| cursor.
| ksec wrote:
| The curse of high standards. I wish I dont notice a lot of
| things. I wish I can stop thinking about why something that is
| clearly better hasn't been done.
|
| I would live a much happier life.
| msh wrote:
| I don't think on this case it's high standards, my eyes are
| just unable to really notice the difference.
| kccqzy wrote:
| It's interesting how different people pick up different
| details. I can't really see the difference between 60Hz and
| 120Hz for example, but I'm unusually sensitive to bad kerning.
| The nano texture screen also screams smearing and low
| resolution to me.
| kcrwfrd_ wrote:
| Crazy. I switch between my work's M4 MacBook Pro and my
| personal M3 MacBook Air all the time and I forget that the
| displays are even different.
| rigrassm wrote:
| I'm right there with you, 60hz feels like a flip book to me
| now.
| hu3 wrote:
| Same. I currently have a 160hz and a 240hz monitor. And I can
| tell the difference between them when scrolling pages with tons
| of text.
|
| There's less ghosting in 240hz.
|
| And scrolling on 60hz to me looks blurry.
|
| I'd like to think that those who don't notice the difference
| have improved brain GPUs that can compensate for ghosting.
| andyferris wrote:
| > I'd like to think that those who don't notice the
| difference have improved brain GPUs that can compensate for
| ghosting.
|
| Wow. My perspective was those that did notice the difference
| were more perceptive. Thank you - now I realize there is a
| completely different take. (I'm not sure that it's helpful
| mind you... but it gives me something to chew on).
| smileybarry wrote:
| Wait until you try an OLED computer monitor, that screws with
| the "higher refresh rate => less ghosting" thought process
| _completely_.
| hu3 wrote:
| Oh yeah I have an Oled LG C4 TV with 120hz refresh rate.
|
| Can't go back to non-oleds.
| prmoustache wrote:
| How can you know it is not bias? For what its worth you might
| have never noticed any difference if you didn't knew they
| weren't refreshing at the same frequency.
| hu3 wrote:
| Oh for me it's very clear.
|
| Specially between 60hz and 120+.
|
| Scrolling looks blurry/ghosted in 60hz.
|
| I guess I could vibe code an app to set monitor Hz randomly
| in either 60 or 280 and test.
|
| But it would be a waste of time from how clearly I can tell
| the difference.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I can tell the difference between 120 and 60 just fine and of
| course prefer better, but it doesn't bother me.
|
| It's unfortunate if it bothers you. I have the same reaction to
| 30Hz.
| tobi_bsf wrote:
| Same, thankfully its now completely gone in phones. But i like
| the MBA 13 for its form factor but the screen feels broken to
| me.
| adastra22 wrote:
| How do you watch movies or TV without throwing up?
| weiliddat wrote:
| Major difference is one you're watching something without
| interacting with it and the other is responding to your
| action; one you have your gaze relatively still, taking in
| the entire frame, the other your eyes are tracking an object
| as you interact with it via some sort of input device.
|
| In tracking motion your eyes/brain can see improved motion
| resolution (how clear the details are in an object moving
| across the screen) up to 1000Hz.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Your body & nervous system processing has input lags on the
| order of 100ms and variance on the order of 10's of ms
| though.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| But your eyes can track a moving object (like a car, or a
| ball, or a cursor or text on a scrolling webpage); they
| don't stay 100ms behind it.
| neogodless wrote:
| Distance to screen matters.
|
| Personally I've had concussions and bad screens do make me
| sick. Even 60hz TVs if I'm sitting somewhat close,
| particularly for certain content. All the chaos of Dr.
| Strange / Multiverse was too much for me to watch.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Motion blur mitigates the issue to some extent, why 24fps
| films are watchable.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I've made a test for myself. Screen split into two parts, two
| small squares moving and bouncing. First square moves every
| frame, second square skips every second frame, but moves 2x. So
| basically one half of the screen is full FPS, another half of
| the screen is half FPS. And I implemented it as a "blind test",
| so I could make a guess and then check it.
|
| For screen with 60 FPS, the difference between 30 FPS and 60
| FPS was pretty obvious and I could guess it 100% of the time.
|
| For screen with 144FPS, the difference between 72FPS and 144FPS
| was not obvious at all and I couldn't reliably guess it at all.
| I also checked it with a few other persons, and they all failed
| this simple test.
|
| So now I'm holding firm opinion, that these high-FPS displays
| are marketing gimmick.
|
| https://pastebin.com/raw/hwR62Yhi here's HTML, save it and
| open. left click reveals which half is "fast" (full FPS) or
| "slow" (half FPS), scroll changes speed, F5 generates new test.
| hnarn wrote:
| > So now I'm holding firm opinion, that these high-FPS
| displays are marketing gimmick.
|
| While I agree the jump from 60 -> 140 hz/fps is not as
| noticeable as 30 -> 60, calling everything above 60 a
| "marketing gimmick" is silly. When my screen or TV falls back
| to 60hz for whatever reason I can notice it immediately, you
| don't have to do anything else than move your mouse or scroll
| down a webpage.
| knollimar wrote:
| If I hook up an LED to a microcontroller and blink it at
| increasing frequencies until I stop being able to see it (for
| me about 85Hz), then if brain hardware is optimized, I
| shouldn't notice a difference at twice that frequency ala
| Nyquist sampling theorem?
| trostaft wrote:
| Pretty cool test, but I wonder how fast you ran them at? I
| was able to distinguish between full and half after
| increasing the speed to around ~2000 units.
| rsanek wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the test. I'm surprised you aren't able to
| tell the difference -- I can pretty consistently (90%+) get
| the right answer to both sides at 120 fps "fast," speeds as
| low as ~500. At higher speeds it's much easier.
| jama211 wrote:
| You can't write it off as a marketing gimmick just because
| you and a few others personally can't see the difference,
| many people demonstrably can.
| JonathanFly wrote:
| For me it's the motion clarity that I notice the most. Higher
| FPS is just one way to get more clarity though, with other
| methods like black frame insertion then even 60 fps feels
| like 240.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is such a weird experience for me. On my phone, I
| instantly notice going back to 60 from 90 hz. But on my
| computers and handheld consoles, I don't mind, or even notice,
| at all.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Agree completely with this.
|
| When I use a desktop display, my pattern is: load page, read
| content for 10-30 seconds, scroll, repeat.
|
| When I use a phone, the read-time-before-scroll is more like
| 1-5 seconds due to the much smaller display.
|
| I notice the scrolling blur in both places on 60 Hz displays,
| but it bothers me way more on a phone because I'm scrolling so
| much more.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I regularly switch between Android 120hz and iPhone 60 hz. It's
| bad for maybe 2 or 3 minutes then the brain get used once again
| to it.
|
| There is nothing groundbreaking about 120hz.
| ksec wrote:
| >My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the
| nano-texture display! :)"
|
| The MBA should also have the LCD display with 120Hz and
| brightness from MBP, Vapour Chamber cooling from iPhone Air, and
| better keyboard.
| jsomedon wrote:
| Is it possible to install previous macOS version on newest
| macbook model? I see people having terrible experience with macOS
| Tahoe yet I am considering purchasing a macbook..
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| no this is not possible because apple stops signing older
| versions soon after they release the latest.
| wtallis wrote:
| No, that's a separate issue. You can upgrade a M4 or earlier
| machine from 15.6 to 15.7 even today, despite 26.0 being out
| for a while, so Apple's still signing a 15.x release at the
| same time as they're offering 26.x releases. (You likely
| won't be able to downgrade from 15.7 back to 15.6.)
|
| Downgrading a M5 machine to 15.x would be impossible not
| because of a signing issue but because Apple never released a
| 15.x build that supported M5 hardware.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I have the M4 Max. The fans never really come on unless I launch
| something that maxes out the GPUs, which I rarely do. I do have
| some software projects that use all CPUs and maxes those out
| while they build (all 14 of them). The fans stay silent.
|
| This is, by far, the fastest machine I've ever had. My previous
| laptop was a more modest M1 mac book pro. And before that I was
| on a cheapo intel i5 Samsung laptop - a stop gap solution after
| my last intel mac died when a loose keyboard key destroyed the
| screen (yep the generation with the crappy keyboards, worst mac
| I've ever owned). That intel was of course pathetic and shit. I
| wasn't expecting much and it disappointed me despite that. The M1
| was about 3x faster. The M4 Max is a beast. In terms of build
| speeds, the i5 was unusable while building and would take 15
| minutes. The M1 got it down to 5 minutes (10 CPU cores that are
| faster than the 4 intel ones). But it didn't have enough memory
| so swapping slowed it down a bit. The M4 max builds stuff in
| around 30 seconds. No more swapping and the 14 cores are quite a
| bit faster than the M1 ones. Same project (but of course with a
| few years of development). We have more tests now, not fewer.
|
| Otherwise it's a great laptop. Keyboard is fine. Touchpad is best
| in class in the industry (everything else is pathetically
| mediocre in comparison; it's not even close), the screen is best
| in class as well (contrast, colors, resolution, everything). And
| Apple learned it's lesson when it comes to keyboards. Most
| windows/linux laptops I'm aware off are a compromise between
| heating/cooling, lousy input and output devices, performance,
| design, screen quality, etc. Apple nails all of those things.
| Nobody else does.
|
| High end Macs are not cheap. But for professionals it's a minor
| expense. If you lease a car for getting your ass to work every
| morning, you are probably spending 2-3x more at least than what
| this would cost you. And the whole point of getting to work is to
| open your laptop and earn a living with it. It's more important
| than the damn car. It's what pays for that car. I spend less than
| what used to be 1 hour of my freelance rate per month on this
| absolute monster. Maybe it's 2 hours for you if you just got
| started. That's still nothing on 160ish billable hours per month.
| Employers tend to be less enlightened of course. But if it's your
| choice, don't be frugal and buy the laptop you need. If a simple
| browser is all you need, of course get something decent looking
| like a mac book air or whatever. But otherwise, get the best you
| can afford. I've compromised once with that Samsung. I did not
| enjoy that.
| tobi_bsf wrote:
| I do not like the Apple Nano Texture. 5% of the time it really
| helps but 100% of the time it just reduces the picture fidelity
| somehow. When doing visual tasks like video editing, it is just
| not good.
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