5 ms·

> None of these things are universal among Windows machines. I can't remember which model, but a Verge review recently said that a Windows laptop had surpassed

by jorvi 10y ago

> None of these things are universal among Windows machines. I can't remember which model, but a Verge review recently said that a Windows laptop had surpassed the best Mac (in terms of hardware quality). Doubtful. Apple does crazy stuff like custom ACPI for Thunderbolt controllers so they can be very efficient. Or having each of the fins on a fan be at a different angle so they have a different pitch and fan noise is distributed across the sound spectrum (reducing total perceived noise). They were also the first (not sure if the only one) with terraced batteries. > It's fine. Everything works and looks good. Sometimes you use legacy apps (which is a feature of Windows -- legacy apps still work) that don't handle scaling well, but the OS helps resolve those issues. It's universally known that display scaling is the forté of macOS, and has been for a long time > Reviewers, people on this thread, and I have all reported Windows being much snappier than OS X. I actually switched to Windows for performance alone. I hate not having a bash terminal, but it's better than using buggy, slow OS X. Final Cut Pro works fine (read: smooth) on the anemic Macbook 2016. Try running Premiere on a Netbook and see how that goes. This is the power of macOS/Apple: they only have a handful of devices in each category, so they can hand-optimize every single one of them. So, wrong.

Mithaldu 10y ago
> Doubtful. Honestly, it depends on what you're looking at. In graphics power for example ALL macs suck. Even when you spend 5000$ on a workstation you barely get something that can hold even with top-of-the-line pc hardware. MBP: 2977 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+Pro+450&id=3683 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+Pro+450... iMac: 5714 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+M395X&id=3340 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+M395... Mac Pro: 5178 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=FirePro+W9000&id=2281 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=FirePro+W9000&... (in D700 variant) Mind, the last one is a high-accuracy cad work graphics card, but if you're looking for raw graphics performance for 3d development for example, all of those are easily outperformed by a piece of kit costing 190$: Any PC: 8508 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+1060+3GB&id=3566 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+10... And thanks to Apple being Apple, upgrading is not an option.
- jorvi 10y ago
  Yes I know, but anyone that needs to do heavy graphics work hasn't been Apple's target market for a long time. That really started to show when they switched to only offering a discrete GPU on the most expensive 15inch MBP. In general I feel that no one (for now) can touch Apple in the laptop market, although half of the reason is macOS working so damn well on MacBooks. But other companies have other markets on lockdown.. Windows is best for the desktop. Linux (or BSD) for servers. Android for phones.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    And yet they were first to market with 5K, and although not exclusive, make a point of citing color management as a priority in displays and software.
    - jorvi 10y ago
      That's for photographers and (static) graphical artists. I guess I should have clarified that by graphical workloads I primarily meant rendering.
glogla 10y ago
> It's universally known that display scaling is the forté of macOS, and has been for a long time I have to interject here. Apple was the first one to have actually working and non-horrible implementation. But the way they went about it has big performance cost. They can only render 2x versions. So if you use the physical resolution, the one that is "as big" as 1280x800 on 2560x1600 13" rMBP, they render it in 12802x800x2 and everything is fine. But if you use scaled resolution, say "as big" as 1400x900 on 13" rMBP, they render it in 14402x9002 and rescale it to 25601600, and this gets laggy on bigger resolutions or on older devices or devices without dedicated GPU. Meanwhile, other operating systems can do non-2x scaling and have no problem with resolutions like that. (Personally I don't can what Windows can do - I'm not using that if I can help it. I just wanted to note that there's this issue with how Apple decided to do scaling.)
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > and this gets laggy on bigger resolutions or on older devices or devices without dedicated GPU I have the original 2012 rMBP, which by all accounts has far too wimpy a GPU for retina, and I've been running it in the max scaled resolution (the 1900x1200@2x mode) since the day I bought it. On first few versions of OS X after it was released, yes, the graphics often got very choppy (especially stuff like Expose), but Apple has really optimized the hell out of those drivers, and by now on Sierra, I never run into any noticeable 2D graphic lag. I'm sure it's terrible for 3D though.
  - glogla 10y ago
    Interesting. You have 15", based on resolution? It might be different but my 2013 13" is definitely laggy on max resolution.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Yeah, the first generation was 15" only. Interesting that later hardware was actually laggier. I even keep my machine stuck on the Intel 4000 graphics 99% of the time.
saghm 10y ago
> Or having each of the fins on a fan be at a different angle so they have a different pitch and fan noise is distributed across the sound spectrum (reducing total perceived noise). Not trying to take away from the innovation of that idea, but IMO ventilation is one of the few areas where I think Macbooks are strictly worse than the PC laptops I've used. The Macbook I was given for work (13" Pro, 2015) constantly overheats, as there isn't really any vent for the fan to push the air out of. I'm sure it's a conscious design decision not to have a vent (either because it "looks bad" or because blowing out hot air is considered worse than overheating the laptop itself), but I'd personally have trouble counting the way that my Macbook ventilates as a net win in "hardware quality".
- striking 10y ago
  The rMBP 2015 vent is at the laptop hinge. If you get the fans to spin up, you can feel the air traveling across the face of your screen with your hand. That being said, it's still awful ventilation. I tried playing video games on it through Windows and Apple's drivers left the laptop more hot to the touch than I would like. I ended up using a fan curve controller application to fix that.
  - saghm 10y ago
    Yeah, I probably could have been more precise and said "there really isn't any ventilation" rather than "there isn't really vent". The vent is there, it's just completely ineffective.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  This, I regularly see 95C while compiling, which I'd imagine isn't doing any favours to a $2000 machine that I expect to last at least 2-3 more years.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    I use my 2012 rMBP in a tropical climate in summer (ambient temp 30 C and up) and it's constantly throttling the CPU and it's survived well. Complete hell on the li-ion battery though (time for my second replacement)
FireBeyond 10y ago
> Final Cut Pro works fine (read: smooth) on the anemic Macbook 2016 Yeah, my girlfriend's MacBook would beg to differ, as it stutters on a couple of heavy websites in Safari tabs.
- sanswork 10y ago
  Safari stutters regularly for me on a new laptop. It's just not a very good browser in my opinion.
- jorvi 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my2I5ge8bqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my2I5ge8bqY even 4k is workable, although not quite as smooth. Desktop Safari is also notorious for not being as smooth and fast as other browser because its primarily built for (battery) efficiency, not performance.

by jorvi 10y ago

Mithaldu 10y ago

> Doubtful. Honestly, it depends on what you're looking at. In graphics power for example ALL macs suck. Even when you spend 5000$ on a workstation you barely get something that can hold even with top-of-the-line pc hardware. MBP: 2977 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+Pro+450&id=3683 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+Pro+450... iMac: 5714 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+M395X&id=3340 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+M395... Mac Pro: 5178 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=FirePro+W9000&id=2281 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=FirePro+W9000&... (in D700 variant) Mind, the last one is a high-accuracy cad work graphics card, but if you're looking for raw graphics performance for 3d development for example, all of those are easily outperformed by a piece of kit costing 190$: Any PC: 8508 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+1060+3GB&id=3566 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+10... And thanks to Apple being Apple, upgrading is not an option.

jorvi 10y ago
Yes I know, but anyone that needs to do heavy graphics work hasn't been Apple's target market for a long time. That really started to show when they switched to only offering a discrete GPU on the most expensive 15inch MBP. In general I feel that no one (for now) can touch Apple in the laptop market, although half of the reason is macOS working so damn well on MacBooks. But other companies have other markets on lockdown.. Windows is best for the desktop. Linux (or BSD) for servers. Android for phones.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  And yet they were first to market with 5K, and although not exclusive, make a point of citing color management as a priority in displays and software.
  - jorvi 10y ago
    That's for photographers and (static) graphical artists. I guess I should have clarified that by graphical workloads I primarily meant rendering.

glogla 10y ago

> It's universally known that display scaling is the forté of macOS, and has been for a long time I have to interject here. Apple was the first one to have actually working and non-horrible implementation. But the way they went about it has big performance cost. They can only render 2x versions. So if you use the physical resolution, the one that is "as big" as 1280x800 on 2560x1600 13" rMBP, they render it in 12802x800x2 and everything is fine. But if you use scaled resolution, say "as big" as 1400x900 on 13" rMBP, they render it in 14402x9002 and rescale it to 25601600, and this gets laggy on bigger resolutions or on older devices or devices without dedicated GPU. Meanwhile, other operating systems can do non-2x scaling and have no problem with resolutions like that. (Personally I don't can what Windows can do - I'm not using that if I can help it. I just wanted to note that there's this issue with how Apple decided to do scaling.)

kalleboo 10y ago
> and this gets laggy on bigger resolutions or on older devices or devices without dedicated GPU I have the original 2012 rMBP, which by all accounts has far too wimpy a GPU for retina, and I've been running it in the max scaled resolution (the 1900x1200@2x mode) since the day I bought it. On first few versions of OS X after it was released, yes, the graphics often got very choppy (especially stuff like Expose), but Apple has really optimized the hell out of those drivers, and by now on Sierra, I never run into any noticeable 2D graphic lag. I'm sure it's terrible for 3D though.
- glogla 10y ago
  Interesting. You have 15", based on resolution? It might be different but my 2013 13" is definitely laggy on max resolution.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Yeah, the first generation was 15" only. Interesting that later hardware was actually laggier. I even keep my machine stuck on the Intel 4000 graphics 99% of the time.

saghm 10y ago

> Or having each of the fins on a fan be at a different angle so they have a different pitch and fan noise is distributed across the sound spectrum (reducing total perceived noise). Not trying to take away from the innovation of that idea, but IMO ventilation is one of the few areas where I think Macbooks are strictly worse than the PC laptops I've used. The Macbook I was given for work (13" Pro, 2015) constantly overheats, as there isn't really any vent for the fan to push the air out of. I'm sure it's a conscious design decision not to have a vent (either because it "looks bad" or because blowing out hot air is considered worse than overheating the laptop itself), but I'd personally have trouble counting the way that my Macbook ventilates as a net win in "hardware quality".

striking 10y ago
The rMBP 2015 vent is at the laptop hinge. If you get the fans to spin up, you can feel the air traveling across the face of your screen with your hand. That being said, it's still awful ventilation. I tried playing video games on it through Windows and Apple's drivers left the laptop more hot to the touch than I would like. I ended up using a fan curve controller application to fix that.
- saghm 10y ago
  Yeah, I probably could have been more precise and said "there really isn't any ventilation" rather than "there isn't really vent". The vent is there, it's just completely ineffective.
AsyncAwait 10y ago
This, I regularly see 95C while compiling, which I'd imagine isn't doing any favours to a $2000 machine that I expect to last at least 2-3 more years.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I use my 2012 rMBP in a tropical climate in summer (ambient temp 30 C and up) and it's constantly throttling the CPU and it's survived well. Complete hell on the li-ion battery though (time for my second replacement)

FireBeyond 10y ago

> Final Cut Pro works fine (read: smooth) on the anemic Macbook 2016 Yeah, my girlfriend's MacBook would beg to differ, as it stutters on a couple of heavy websites in Safari tabs.

sanswork 10y ago
Safari stutters regularly for me on a new laptop. It's just not a very good browser in my opinion.
jorvi 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my2I5ge8bqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my2I5ge8bqY even 4k is workable, although not quite as smooth. Desktop Safari is also notorious for not being as smooth and fast as other browser because its primarily built for (battery) efficiency, not performance.