9 ms·

Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf? I used to look forward to these announcements,

Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf? I used to look forward to these announcements, now it's just 'we upgraded to a +1 generation config (still 1-2 generations behind what others are doing), that'll be 2000 bucks thanks'. Advertising 4 cores and 2018 Iris graphics as if it's some kind of achievement, when competitors have full dGpu solutions and 6 cores in same sized chassis at the same price bracket. They're taking a bit of a piss at this point.

dontbenebby 6y ago
My issue is forcing terrible design decisions. No headphone port on the SE, forced touchbar on MBP. My next laptop may not be a Mac because of the touchbar.
jccalhoun 6y ago
The "apple tax" has been a thing for decades now. I have never owned a mac but I listen to a mac-centric podcast and from their complaints I am not sure why I, a non-programmer, would ever pay the apple tax to buy one.
New_Horizon 6y ago
It's not like pulling stuff like this is new for Apple but I think Jobs being dead has caused it to happen a LOT more.
explorigin 6y ago
Perhaps, but show me build quality on the same level in the PC world. Even though I find Apple lagging behind it's previous standards in build quality, it's still better that most in the PC world. (I'm still on a mid 2015 MBP and completely content to stay with it.)
- curiousgal 6y ago
  Dell XPS 15.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    I own one and this is just not true.
  - tachion 6y ago
    Not even close. All plastic, much worse touchpad and coil whine in all models I cared to check up on.
    - theelous3 6y ago
      It's carbon fiber composite and machined aluminum. Yes, there is some plastic, but it's solid as shit. No coil whine in mine. Touchpad idk, because I don't care that much about miniscule differences in touchpads, but it does the job as well as any high end laptop. All touchpads are trash imo, so I find it hard to prefer one over the other. Most important for me when writing code is keyboard and screen. The kn is acceptable. The matte screen is a must for me. Even if it was all plastic, tbh I'd still take it for the matte screen.
      - feteru 6y ago
        I think we have different subjective tastes, I use my laptop docked most of the time, but the touchpad on macs is the only acceptable one I've used. All others fall that 5-10% below in performance and smoothness that makes them unusable. It's miniscule, but it's the most important final few percentage points. Not a huge fan of matte screens either, I like pretty colors that pop and rarely work outside. Although I did have a privacy screen on my computer for a bit which was fun.
        theelous3 6y ago
        Even indoors I find the reflections awful on non matte monitors. If you have your laptop permadocked, why do you care about touchpad? Surely you use a mouse?
  - explorigin 6y ago
    I also own a Precision M3800 (the business version of XPS 15). It is on par performance-wise but not in fit and finish (rubberized wrist-rest? what was Dell thinking?) Granted there are many generations of the XPS 15.
- tomerbd 6y ago
  Huawei MateBook X Pro
- afandian 6y ago
  I feel like a broken record but I must push back on the 'quality'. Just in personal experience, we've had macs swell up, keyboards repeatedly fail, expensive repairs. Maybe the fit-and-finish is high grade but actualy _quality_ is alarmingly low, IMHO, especially for the price. And if you're on a machine from 5 years ago, maybe you missed the recent plummet.
  - explorigin 6y ago
    I'm not looking for what is good, just what's better. Do you have a recommendation for what is better in the PC world?
    - jseutter 6y ago
      I think the person you replied to is saying that while the grade of macbooks is good (which normal people call quality), the quality of macbooks is not (ie, does what it says on the tin, and the keyboard lasts the life of the laptop). It's the BMW argument. Great interior, power, handling. Feels like quality. Actual quality sucks because the thing needs more repairs than a Toyota. https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pmp/study-notes/quality-vs-grade/ https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pmp/study-notes/quality-vs-gr...
    - jsight 6y ago
      The Lenovo Thinkpad series is well built. The P50 (not sure what replaced it) is really solid, for example.
      - orhmeh09 6y ago
        I have a T480 and it’s the worst laptop I’ve ever owned. Had to send it back once for repairs already. The regular charging port no longer works so I use one of the other USB-C ports, which is now crumbling from the inside. The touchpad moves on its own. And worse, a failed firmware update has corrupted the Intel Management Engine (MeSpiLock failed message every boot) that I refuse to install Windows to fix. Finally, the absurdity of the never-fixed throttling issue on Linux — and Docker if you use Windows — makes it an awful machine for any kind of development. I spent a good chunk of money on this computer and I feel stuck with it. I will stay far away from Thinkpads in the future. Wide berth advised.
- phaus 6y ago
  You have the last good one. My 2015 died and my employer gave me a 2017 that promptly died 3 months later. Apple Care and the genius bar were a pretty shitty customer service experience but I eventually got it back. The keyboard is worse than the rubber domes on the $200 Walmart Black friday special I got several years ago. That's not a joke. For the 2017 model Ram maxed out at 16gb which made it a laughing stock for that era. The touchpad is bigger and still good, but feels substantially worse than the 2015. After a year the battery life was a joke @ <50% brightness. It doesn't feel noticably faster than the 2015 either. My 2015 was the best laptop I've ever used by a longshot. Thinkpads of the same era match it in build quality and have slightly better keyboards but the touchpad and the Mac workflow are something I grew to love. The keyboard on the 2017 was so bad when a coworker with an old model was showing me how to do something on my laptop he genuinely thought it was broken.
  - skocznymroczny 6y ago
    It might depend on your typing style. If you hit the keys with force, you might prefer rubber domes/mech keyboards, if you flow around the keyboard just gently tapping the keys, butterfly is amazing. I would easily pay $200 for a desktop keyboard that gives the same typing experience.
    - phaus 6y ago
      I'm fairly heavy handed so maybe that's why it doesn't appeal to me. I use Box Navy switches on one of my mechanical keyboards. Those are notoriously heavy.
      - skocznymroczny 6y ago
        Oh man! Kailh Box Navy have actuation force of 85g – 95g. I found 50g mx blues too heavy for my fingers.
        phaus 6y ago
        Kailh might make something lighter than MX blues. Not sure what's out there on the light side. I'm sure cherry or someone must make something nice that still clicks. I also use linear switches around 60-70g.
tsar9x 6y ago
Well, competitors are still behind Apple. They offer worse touchpad, worse screens (it's either 16:9 or weird resolution), no macOS, worse speakers, worse microphone, worse battery.
- nickcox 6y ago
  No sure that no macOS makes competitors objectively worse.
  - tsar9x 6y ago
    Objectively not, but in practice a lot of people are locked in Apple ecosystem, for long time MacBooks were the only good laptops for development with support of communicators, graphic tools etc. It's changing with Linux and WSL, but can't blame people to stay with macOS if it works for them. Personally I'm using linux and thinkpad, but even x1 carbon falls short to MacBooks in areas I mentioned before.
    - feteru 6y ago
      Yep, I'm using an X1 Yoga, still not nearly as nice to use as OSX on a Macbook Pro that's 3 years older than it, and that's with either Windows or Linux. Ubuntu touchpad drivers are pretty bad, the windows ones are tolerable but still fail at multi-finger gestures. I really like the touchscreen, but the display colors/look aren't nearly as good. Overally pretty disappointed for a system that's close to top-spec when compared to my base spec MBP from years earlier (but it does run my Windows applications for work which I need).
  - tachion 6y ago
    Laugh as much as you want but to me (and many others) it actually is. I would look at other manufacturers for their hardware, but sadly it's all non-MacOs and I value this operating system above anything else for my needs (work and personal).
    - Lammy 6y ago
ashtonkem 6y ago
Apple has never been particularly great on the price/performance ratio of their laptops. You buy their laptops for the fully integrated package, not for the specs.
KingFelix 6y ago
Now with quad core ability! Never been a mac person, but I do agree it appears to be a bit lackluster. Its not the same comparison, but for ~1800 a new home workstation with 2070 Super / 3900x 12 core CPU becomes a pretty powerful machine.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I haven't owned a mac in a while since employment now supplies me with a laptop. But my experience with this point of view is that it's about holistic vs. non-holistic thinking. When someone points at specs and tells me that X is better than Y for price, they're getting to that conclusion by ignoring a whole bunch of variables. To take this to the extreme, I had a friend genuinely say, "Why did you spend $90 on a baby monitor? You can just get a RPi, Camera, microphone, and wire it together for like $45." I have an xps-15 for work and it's... it's okay. It's decent hardware. But I want a mac because I need a non-Windows environment and I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu. I no-longer try to undock it because doing so is either a full reboot or the resolution/scaling gets messed up and video memory corrupts (my fonts became colour vomits). For me, buying a Mac is basically, "here's a ton of money. Now I don't have to think about these things for 7 years." (except the last few macs questionable hardware absolutely ruined this peace of mind...)
- dylkil 6y ago
  >I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu. im thinking about moving to ubuntu, what sort of jank is annoying you?
  - danogentili 6y ago
    Install arch i3
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    All OSs have their issues. I use Windows and Ubuntu daily and have had work macbooks. In a lot of cases it does come down to what you are used to, as there are design differences that aren't necessarily worse or better but when you get used to one the other feels janky. At any rate, in Ubuntu's case things like display support are worse - especially multiple different DPI screens (yes, there are workarounds). UI is less slick in places. Some software is better supported while some have worse support. Things like that.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
xxs 6y ago
>Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf? Since forever... Ok, perhaps adding the SSDs was a great touch. However, Apple is considered a fashion brand, where you pay more for the brand, itself. In virtually any regard Lenovo business laptops are a better price/value proposition: easily extensible - more memory, m2 slots, docking, pcb with conformal coating, easily serviceable keyboard, touch pads, replaceable battery, etc. A lot better thermals, like a lot. And when it comes to perf. it's not even remotely close. And yes, multiple USB-A slots, HDMI, display port, rj-45, no dongle nonsense.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Honestly not a fan of the Lenovo line. I've always bought their tried and true models, and none of them have held up over time vs my MacBooks. Sure on the specs/$ they were better, but overall I preferred my macbooks.
  - xxs 6y ago
    Any particular reasons?
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      They just didn't seem to last as long, for one reason or another. They were fine when functional. We just replaced them at a much greater rate than our Macbooks. BUT this was about 2 years ago, so a lot of our macbooks were older devices without the new keyboard mechanism. In my personal life, my 2010 pro is still going strong. My mother uses it now - no complaints. Some things have failed, the optical drive. But man is that thing a tank.
nothis 6y ago
I can defend their "chassis" as being ahead of the competition and you basically paying for the time they spent shaving shit off until it's perfect. But that damn touch bar. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the most custom of custom random hardware part, adding like half a smartphone's production cost to it. How much productivity can that thing possibly add? Who on earth says, "yea that touch bar, certainly worth more than 1TB of SSD space and 16GB of RAM!".
- hu3 6y ago
  I can't defend their chassis. Competition offers 14" machines in 13" form-factor with thin bezels for almost a decade now.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    What decade old laptop would you compare to a Macbook in design? I have only started noticing attractive competitor laptops appearing around 2014.
    - hu3 6y ago
      I'm talking about form-factor specifically. Not "design" which is subjective. XPS 13 has had thin bezel for a long time now. Sporting smaller chassis than macs on same screen size. Here's first google result, from 2015: https://www.ibtimes.com/dell-xps-12-xps-13-xps-15-hands-ultra-thin-bezel-laptops-get-windows-10-intel-skylake-2133627 https://www.ibtimes.com/dell-xps-12-xps-13-xps-15-hands-ultr... And here is a list of various laptops with thin bezels from different brands: https://www.colourmylearning.com/2018/09/laptops-with-minimal-bezel-best-ultraportables-with-infinity-display/ https://www.colourmylearning.com/2018/09/laptops-with-minima...
paulcole 6y ago
They don’t expect everyone who bought the last computer update to buy this one. I work on a 13” MacBook Air from 2014 and it’s time for an update. $1500 for this feels like exactly what I’ve been waiting for. When was the last time that over a period of years each update to a MacBook Pro was a monumental upgrade? Maybe early 2000s when they went from PowerPC to Intel? I think you’re just remembering this rosier than it really was.
mysticmode 6y ago
Indeed. And the words that Apple puts to explain about their products is going really numb. They should change their ambiguous tone and show the real progress in these mac. I can absolutely get a better laptop at a reasonable price than these products and the features that offers and be more productive.
biktor_gj 6y ago
It's even worse when you notice that two of the four "new" models come with an 8th gen Intel CPU, and DDR3 memory, it's like they replaced the keyboard from the previous model and they're calling it "new". Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs, it really seems like Apple is trying its best to alienate buyers from their laptop line. Just recommended a coworker a Macbook Air for her son, an i7, 16Gb of RAM and 512Gb SSD. From off to account creation, the fan was already running. By the time the laptop was showing the desktop it was burning to touch. Some more testing and I found out the CPU was at 94-98ºC after 4 minutes. Turns out it is by design (just take a look at the photos of the cpu cooler, separated from the fan https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-the-macbook-air https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-th...). She just returned the laptop and is exploring options from Dell and Lenovo. Even if you like MacOS, you now have to wait before buying anything Apple until you can see a teardown just to see if it's going to survive even casual use.
- danieldk 6y ago
  Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs, What thermal problems? I have had the Air 2020 in the Core i5 configuration for two weeks and the fan rarely spins up. Even when it does, I can touch the hottest part of the laptop without problems. From off to account creation, the fan was already running. That's not strange. Spotlight spends the first whatever amount of time on indexing the hard drive. Indexing implies parsing various files/file formats. This usually ends when indexing is done. With the fixed keyboard, the MacBook Air 2020 is finally a MacBook that I love again, which I can't really say of the two butterfly Pros I had before (with the first I really disliked the keyboard, the second had a Touch Bar and I always had trouble pressing the Esc key blindly).
- wyxuan 6y ago
  Honestly since Intel chips have almost all flatlined into 14nm, with the only minute improvements coming from better binning, I don't think the selling CPUs 2gens behind is an issue. Edit-they're actually selling the 10th gen chip, not 8th gen like you describe
bluedino 6y ago
>> I want to go back to the 2010 MBP when it was the best designed, highest perf device available. Not the 13". It was still packing a Core 2 Duo and the screen was 1280x800, when the Air was running 1440x900. The battery life was amazing, though!
theelous3 6y ago
> starting It's been like this since forever. I can't remember a point in time where price per performance was a selling point for apple products, barring seriously oldschool machines. They had the build quality + trendy side of the market shored up for a small time, but even then thinkpads were an easy match, albeit extremely untrendy. For the last long while, since the regoodification of dell and the general shift towards catching up with mac in build quality across the market, they've been a poor choice for anyone looking to maximize their value. I'm frankly shocked that someone finds this surprising these days.
pjmlp 6y ago
I guess so, a Thinkpad P graphical workstation series is cheaper than the top 13" model.
dangus 6y ago
This is really typical “missing the point” when it comes to Apple hardware. First, Apple hardware was never bleeding edge even in 2010. That’s not ever how they operated. They’ve really never played the spec war. They don’t even publicly state the RAM spec in the iPhone while Android competitors make it into a price segmenting feature. What these computers give out is all the stuff people really care about. The computer’s shape and even the large ancient-looking top bezel are giving you a more comfortable typing surface compared to the XPS 13 where your palms slip off the edge if your hands are too big. https://youtu.be/5hMie-xZFzQ https://youtu.be/5hMie-xZFzQ Skip forward to the part talking about typing comfort. The speakers in the Air and Pro are best in class and nothing comes close. That’s something the customer will notice and care about. The microphones in Apple machines are incredible. Something the customer will notice and care about when they use the computer on conference calls. And nobody else has made a trackpad anywhere near as good. Still. I dispute the assertion that there’s a computer out there in this same form factor with a discrete GPU at a similar price point with similar specs, and if there is I’m sure it’s a GeForce MX and not a GTX or RTX, in other words, not really worth the trouble. In reality, nobody buying this class of computer gives a shit about the graphics card. Investing battery life into one is a bad trade-off. I’d also like to see this mythical computer you speak of, what model are you talking about? I also dispute your claims on pricing in general. Dell, for example, places a gate on 16GB of RAM and the high DPI display to the highest XPS 13 model. It’s way less configurable than a similar Mac. A lot of Windows computers that seem to be equivalent to Macs omit features like a high DPI display or make them an upgrade and act like 1080p is “good enough” for customer spending almost a grand or more and doing mostly text work. I find that oversight unacceptable: a high DPI display should absolutely be standard on any computer over $700 that isn’t intended for gaming, IMO. Expecting 6 cores or the very latest generation of every component is beside the point. Nobody notices that stuff. Only benchmarks can see the difference. What actually makes a good computer is good ergonomics, good display, good battery life, good speakers, good microphones. The hardware internals are, in 2020 when computer performance is improving at a slower rate than ever before, nearly a complete afterthought.
Hippocrates 6y ago
Has Apple ever designed a product solely around just a couple of specs? No. Consumers unfortunately fail to realize this and compare A vs B based on cherry picked specs. The reason you can't get a top of the line CPU and GPU in the MacBook is that Apple would then have to increase the price past the point which the machine would have broad appeal, or make concessions in other important areas. What are those important areas? - Speakers, Mic, Webcam - Trackpad - Aluminum chassis and form factor - Touch ID - Mac OS (like it or not, this is perhaps the most important feature for those considering Macs.) It's very possible the competitive landscape has changed since 2010 and they are placing more focus on these ancillary features than before, but the strategy has always appeared to be to deliver a superior holistic machine. I, and their financials would argue they have been doing that from before 2010 through now.
dangus 6y ago
The 10nm Intel Ice Lake CPUs found in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro are currently exclusive to Apple.

dontbenebby 6y ago

My issue is forcing terrible design decisions. No headphone port on the SE, forced touchbar on MBP. My next laptop may not be a Mac because of the touchbar.

jccalhoun 6y ago

The "apple tax" has been a thing for decades now. I have never owned a mac but I listen to a mac-centric podcast and from their complaints I am not sure why I, a non-programmer, would ever pay the apple tax to buy one.

New_Horizon 6y ago

It's not like pulling stuff like this is new for Apple but I think Jobs being dead has caused it to happen a LOT more.

explorigin 6y ago

Perhaps, but show me build quality on the same level in the PC world. Even though I find Apple lagging behind it's previous standards in build quality, it's still better that most in the PC world. (I'm still on a mid 2015 MBP and completely content to stay with it.)

curiousgal 6y ago
Dell XPS 15.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  I own one and this is just not true.
- tachion 6y ago
  Not even close. All plastic, much worse touchpad and coil whine in all models I cared to check up on.
  - theelous3 6y ago
    It's carbon fiber composite and machined aluminum. Yes, there is some plastic, but it's solid as shit. No coil whine in mine. Touchpad idk, because I don't care that much about miniscule differences in touchpads, but it does the job as well as any high end laptop. All touchpads are trash imo, so I find it hard to prefer one over the other. Most important for me when writing code is keyboard and screen. The kn is acceptable. The matte screen is a must for me. Even if it was all plastic, tbh I'd still take it for the matte screen.
    - feteru 6y ago
      I think we have different subjective tastes, I use my laptop docked most of the time, but the touchpad on macs is the only acceptable one I've used. All others fall that 5-10% below in performance and smoothness that makes them unusable. It's miniscule, but it's the most important final few percentage points. Not a huge fan of matte screens either, I like pretty colors that pop and rarely work outside. Although I did have a privacy screen on my computer for a bit which was fun.
      - theelous3 6y ago
        Even indoors I find the reflections awful on non matte monitors. If you have your laptop permadocked, why do you care about touchpad? Surely you use a mouse?
- explorigin 6y ago
  I also own a Precision M3800 (the business version of XPS 15). It is on par performance-wise but not in fit and finish (rubberized wrist-rest? what was Dell thinking?) Granted there are many generations of the XPS 15.
tomerbd 6y ago
Huawei MateBook X Pro
afandian 6y ago
I feel like a broken record but I must push back on the 'quality'. Just in personal experience, we've had macs swell up, keyboards repeatedly fail, expensive repairs. Maybe the fit-and-finish is high grade but actualy _quality_ is alarmingly low, IMHO, especially for the price. And if you're on a machine from 5 years ago, maybe you missed the recent plummet.
- explorigin 6y ago
  I'm not looking for what is good, just what's better. Do you have a recommendation for what is better in the PC world?
  - jseutter 6y ago
    I think the person you replied to is saying that while the grade of macbooks is good (which normal people call quality), the quality of macbooks is not (ie, does what it says on the tin, and the keyboard lasts the life of the laptop). It's the BMW argument. Great interior, power, handling. Feels like quality. Actual quality sucks because the thing needs more repairs than a Toyota. https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pmp/study-notes/quality-vs-grade/ https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pmp/study-notes/quality-vs-gr...
  - jsight 6y ago
    The Lenovo Thinkpad series is well built. The P50 (not sure what replaced it) is really solid, for example.
    - orhmeh09 6y ago
      I have a T480 and it’s the worst laptop I’ve ever owned. Had to send it back once for repairs already. The regular charging port no longer works so I use one of the other USB-C ports, which is now crumbling from the inside. The touchpad moves on its own. And worse, a failed firmware update has corrupted the Intel Management Engine (MeSpiLock failed message every boot) that I refuse to install Windows to fix. Finally, the absurdity of the never-fixed throttling issue on Linux — and Docker if you use Windows — makes it an awful machine for any kind of development. I spent a good chunk of money on this computer and I feel stuck with it. I will stay far away from Thinkpads in the future. Wide berth advised.
phaus 6y ago
You have the last good one. My 2015 died and my employer gave me a 2017 that promptly died 3 months later. Apple Care and the genius bar were a pretty shitty customer service experience but I eventually got it back. The keyboard is worse than the rubber domes on the $200 Walmart Black friday special I got several years ago. That's not a joke. For the 2017 model Ram maxed out at 16gb which made it a laughing stock for that era. The touchpad is bigger and still good, but feels substantially worse than the 2015. After a year the battery life was a joke @ <50% brightness. It doesn't feel noticably faster than the 2015 either. My 2015 was the best laptop I've ever used by a longshot. Thinkpads of the same era match it in build quality and have slightly better keyboards but the touchpad and the Mac workflow are something I grew to love. The keyboard on the 2017 was so bad when a coworker with an old model was showing me how to do something on my laptop he genuinely thought it was broken.
- skocznymroczny 6y ago
  It might depend on your typing style. If you hit the keys with force, you might prefer rubber domes/mech keyboards, if you flow around the keyboard just gently tapping the keys, butterfly is amazing. I would easily pay $200 for a desktop keyboard that gives the same typing experience.
  - phaus 6y ago
    I'm fairly heavy handed so maybe that's why it doesn't appeal to me. I use Box Navy switches on one of my mechanical keyboards. Those are notoriously heavy.
    - skocznymroczny 6y ago
      Oh man! Kailh Box Navy have actuation force of 85g – 95g. I found 50g mx blues too heavy for my fingers.
      - phaus 6y ago
        Kailh might make something lighter than MX blues. Not sure what's out there on the light side. I'm sure cherry or someone must make something nice that still clicks. I also use linear switches around 60-70g.

tsar9x 6y ago

Well, competitors are still behind Apple. They offer worse touchpad, worse screens (it's either 16:9 or weird resolution), no macOS, worse speakers, worse microphone, worse battery.

nickcox 6y ago
No sure that no macOS makes competitors objectively worse.
- tsar9x 6y ago
  Objectively not, but in practice a lot of people are locked in Apple ecosystem, for long time MacBooks were the only good laptops for development with support of communicators, graphic tools etc. It's changing with Linux and WSL, but can't blame people to stay with macOS if it works for them. Personally I'm using linux and thinkpad, but even x1 carbon falls short to MacBooks in areas I mentioned before.
  - feteru 6y ago
    Yep, I'm using an X1 Yoga, still not nearly as nice to use as OSX on a Macbook Pro that's 3 years older than it, and that's with either Windows or Linux. Ubuntu touchpad drivers are pretty bad, the windows ones are tolerable but still fail at multi-finger gestures. I really like the touchscreen, but the display colors/look aren't nearly as good. Overally pretty disappointed for a system that's close to top-spec when compared to my base spec MBP from years earlier (but it does run my Windows applications for work which I need).
- tachion 6y ago
  Laugh as much as you want but to me (and many others) it actually is. I would look at other manufacturers for their hardware, but sadly it's all non-MacOs and I value this operating system above anything else for my needs (work and personal).
  - Lammy 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

Apple has never been particularly great on the price/performance ratio of their laptops. You buy their laptops for the fully integrated package, not for the specs.

KingFelix 6y ago

Now with quad core ability! Never been a mac person, but I do agree it appears to be a bit lackluster. Its not the same comparison, but for ~1800 a new home workstation with 2070 Super / 3900x 12 core CPU becomes a pretty powerful machine.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I haven't owned a mac in a while since employment now supplies me with a laptop. But my experience with this point of view is that it's about holistic vs. non-holistic thinking. When someone points at specs and tells me that X is better than Y for price, they're getting to that conclusion by ignoring a whole bunch of variables. To take this to the extreme, I had a friend genuinely say, "Why did you spend $90 on a baby monitor? You can just get a RPi, Camera, microphone, and wire it together for like $45." I have an xps-15 for work and it's... it's okay. It's decent hardware. But I want a mac because I need a non-Windows environment and I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu. I no-longer try to undock it because doing so is either a full reboot or the resolution/scaling gets messed up and video memory corrupts (my fonts became colour vomits). For me, buying a Mac is basically, "here's a ton of money. Now I don't have to think about these things for 7 years." (except the last few macs questionable hardware absolutely ruined this peace of mind...)

dylkil 6y ago
>I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu. im thinking about moving to ubuntu, what sort of jank is annoying you?
- danogentili 6y ago
  Install arch i3
- Tenoke 6y ago
  All OSs have their issues. I use Windows and Ubuntu daily and have had work macbooks. In a lot of cases it does come down to what you are used to, as there are design differences that aren't necessarily worse or better but when you get used to one the other feels janky. At any rate, in Ubuntu's case things like display support are worse - especially multiple different DPI screens (yes, there are workarounds). UI is less slick in places. Some software is better supported while some have worse support. Things like that.
  - ikeboy 6y ago

xxs 6y ago

>Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf? Since forever... Ok, perhaps adding the SSDs was a great touch. However, Apple is considered a fashion brand, where you pay more for the brand, itself. In virtually any regard Lenovo business laptops are a better price/value proposition: easily extensible - more memory, m2 slots, docking, pcb with conformal coating, easily serviceable keyboard, touch pads, replaceable battery, etc. A lot better thermals, like a lot. And when it comes to perf. it's not even remotely close. And yes, multiple USB-A slots, HDMI, display port, rj-45, no dongle nonsense.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
Honestly not a fan of the Lenovo line. I've always bought their tried and true models, and none of them have held up over time vs my MacBooks. Sure on the specs/$ they were better, but overall I preferred my macbooks.
- xxs 6y ago
  Any particular reasons?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    They just didn't seem to last as long, for one reason or another. They were fine when functional. We just replaced them at a much greater rate than our Macbooks. BUT this was about 2 years ago, so a lot of our macbooks were older devices without the new keyboard mechanism. In my personal life, my 2010 pro is still going strong. My mother uses it now - no complaints. Some things have failed, the optical drive. But man is that thing a tank.

nothis 6y ago

I can defend their "chassis" as being ahead of the competition and you basically paying for the time they spent shaving shit off until it's perfect. But that damn touch bar. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the most custom of custom random hardware part, adding like half a smartphone's production cost to it. How much productivity can that thing possibly add? Who on earth says, "yea that touch bar, certainly worth more than 1TB of SSD space and 16GB of RAM!".

hu3 6y ago
I can't defend their chassis. Competition offers 14" machines in 13" form-factor with thin bezels for almost a decade now.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  What decade old laptop would you compare to a Macbook in design? I have only started noticing attractive competitor laptops appearing around 2014.
  - hu3 6y ago
    I'm talking about form-factor specifically. Not "design" which is subjective. XPS 13 has had thin bezel for a long time now. Sporting smaller chassis than macs on same screen size. Here's first google result, from 2015: https://www.ibtimes.com/dell-xps-12-xps-13-xps-15-hands-ultra-thin-bezel-laptops-get-windows-10-intel-skylake-2133627 https://www.ibtimes.com/dell-xps-12-xps-13-xps-15-hands-ultr... And here is a list of various laptops with thin bezels from different brands: https://www.colourmylearning.com/2018/09/laptops-with-minimal-bezel-best-ultraportables-with-infinity-display/ https://www.colourmylearning.com/2018/09/laptops-with-minima...

paulcole 6y ago

They don’t expect everyone who bought the last computer update to buy this one. I work on a 13” MacBook Air from 2014 and it’s time for an update. $1500 for this feels like exactly what I’ve been waiting for. When was the last time that over a period of years each update to a MacBook Pro was a monumental upgrade? Maybe early 2000s when they went from PowerPC to Intel? I think you’re just remembering this rosier than it really was.

mysticmode 6y ago

Indeed. And the words that Apple puts to explain about their products is going really numb. They should change their ambiguous tone and show the real progress in these mac. I can absolutely get a better laptop at a reasonable price than these products and the features that offers and be more productive.

biktor_gj 6y ago

It's even worse when you notice that two of the four "new" models come with an 8th gen Intel CPU, and DDR3 memory, it's like they replaced the keyboard from the previous model and they're calling it "new". Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs, it really seems like Apple is trying its best to alienate buyers from their laptop line. Just recommended a coworker a Macbook Air for her son, an i7, 16Gb of RAM and 512Gb SSD. From off to account creation, the fan was already running. By the time the laptop was showing the desktop it was burning to touch. Some more testing and I found out the CPU was at 94-98ºC after 4 minutes. Turns out it is by design (just take a look at the photos of the cpu cooler, separated from the fan https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-the-macbook-air https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-th...). She just returned the laptop and is exploring options from Dell and Lenovo. Even if you like MacOS, you now have to wait before buying anything Apple until you can see a teardown just to see if it's going to survive even casual use.

danieldk 6y ago
Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs, What thermal problems? I have had the Air 2020 in the Core i5 configuration for two weeks and the fan rarely spins up. Even when it does, I can touch the hottest part of the laptop without problems. From off to account creation, the fan was already running. That's not strange. Spotlight spends the first whatever amount of time on indexing the hard drive. Indexing implies parsing various files/file formats. This usually ends when indexing is done. With the fixed keyboard, the MacBook Air 2020 is finally a MacBook that I love again, which I can't really say of the two butterfly Pros I had before (with the first I really disliked the keyboard, the second had a Touch Bar and I always had trouble pressing the Esc key blindly).
wyxuan 6y ago
Honestly since Intel chips have almost all flatlined into 14nm, with the only minute improvements coming from better binning, I don't think the selling CPUs 2gens behind is an issue. Edit-they're actually selling the 10th gen chip, not 8th gen like you describe

bluedino 6y ago

>> I want to go back to the 2010 MBP when it was the best designed, highest perf device available. Not the 13". It was still packing a Core 2 Duo and the screen was 1280x800, when the Air was running 1440x900. The battery life was amazing, though!

theelous3 6y ago

> starting It's been like this since forever. I can't remember a point in time where price per performance was a selling point for apple products, barring seriously oldschool machines. They had the build quality + trendy side of the market shored up for a small time, but even then thinkpads were an easy match, albeit extremely untrendy. For the last long while, since the regoodification of dell and the general shift towards catching up with mac in build quality across the market, they've been a poor choice for anyone looking to maximize their value. I'm frankly shocked that someone finds this surprising these days.

pjmlp 6y ago

I guess so, a Thinkpad P graphical workstation series is cheaper than the top 13" model.

dangus 6y ago

This is really typical “missing the point” when it comes to Apple hardware. First, Apple hardware was never bleeding edge even in 2010. That’s not ever how they operated. They’ve really never played the spec war. They don’t even publicly state the RAM spec in the iPhone while Android competitors make it into a price segmenting feature. What these computers give out is all the stuff people really care about. The computer’s shape and even the large ancient-looking top bezel are giving you a more comfortable typing surface compared to the XPS 13 where your palms slip off the edge if your hands are too big. https://youtu.be/5hMie-xZFzQ https://youtu.be/5hMie-xZFzQ Skip forward to the part talking about typing comfort. The speakers in the Air and Pro are best in class and nothing comes close. That’s something the customer will notice and care about. The microphones in Apple machines are incredible. Something the customer will notice and care about when they use the computer on conference calls. And nobody else has made a trackpad anywhere near as good. Still. I dispute the assertion that there’s a computer out there in this same form factor with a discrete GPU at a similar price point with similar specs, and if there is I’m sure it’s a GeForce MX and not a GTX or RTX, in other words, not really worth the trouble. In reality, nobody buying this class of computer gives a shit about the graphics card. Investing battery life into one is a bad trade-off. I’d also like to see this mythical computer you speak of, what model are you talking about? I also dispute your claims on pricing in general. Dell, for example, places a gate on 16GB of RAM and the high DPI display to the highest XPS 13 model. It’s way less configurable than a similar Mac. A lot of Windows computers that seem to be equivalent to Macs omit features like a high DPI display or make them an upgrade and act like 1080p is “good enough” for customer spending almost a grand or more and doing mostly text work. I find that oversight unacceptable: a high DPI display should absolutely be standard on any computer over $700 that isn’t intended for gaming, IMO. Expecting 6 cores or the very latest generation of every component is beside the point. Nobody notices that stuff. Only benchmarks can see the difference. What actually makes a good computer is good ergonomics, good display, good battery life, good speakers, good microphones. The hardware internals are, in 2020 when computer performance is improving at a slower rate than ever before, nearly a complete afterthought.

Hippocrates 6y ago

Has Apple ever designed a product solely around just a couple of specs? No. Consumers unfortunately fail to realize this and compare A vs B based on cherry picked specs. The reason you can't get a top of the line CPU and GPU in the MacBook is that Apple would then have to increase the price past the point which the machine would have broad appeal, or make concessions in other important areas. What are those important areas? - Speakers, Mic, Webcam - Trackpad - Aluminum chassis and form factor - Touch ID - Mac OS (like it or not, this is perhaps the most important feature for those considering Macs.) It's very possible the competitive landscape has changed since 2010 and they are placing more focus on these ancillary features than before, but the strategy has always appeared to be to deliver a superior holistic machine. I, and their financials would argue they have been doing that from before 2010 through now.

dangus 6y ago

The 10nm Intel Ice Lake CPUs found in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro are currently exclusive to Apple.