5 ms·

Doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, microphone, battery backup, and fingerprint scanner which would be necessary to make it "comparable"

Doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, microphone, battery backup, and fingerprint scanner which would be necessary to make it "comparable" to a base model Macbook Air. It also isn't a portable, fanless laptop which has its perks.

speedgoose 6y ago
And you have to assemble the pc and install an operating system on it. It's really not comparable.
- tonyhb 6y ago
  You also have to unbox each component vs' just the macbook air, am I right? Sarcasm aside, I don't think assembling a PC has any factor in performance/price here...
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    My company doesn't really want to pay me to assemble a PC.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    @dang Someone flagged my comments. I think they were very normal, about the value of a MacBook air M1 compared to buying parts and assembling a PC, but perhaps they were against the rules.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
There are plenty of 8 core/16 thread Ryzen 4750U laptops for around the same price that outclass the M1 in multicore benchmarks.
- tastyminerals 6y ago
  It may outclass it in performance. However, all my life I've been waiting for something that runs over 10h on a single charge. I am naturally surprised that this is not something that ppl truly appreciate in a laptop. Hell, I even bought a cheap Atom laptop once just to have more battery time. So as of now, there's literally no decent competitor to M1 laptops. One must be living under a rock to buy anything but Apple and this is coming from someone who doesn't have Apple products and always hated their walled off ecosystem. I am reconsidering my life choices :)
  - db48x 6y ago
    Using a laptop screen for 10 hours a day is a waste of a day, and if you're at your desk with multiple monitors then you don't need a laptop.
    - Toutouxc 6y ago
      What if I want to use the same machine both at my desk and at work? The ability to use the machine on-the-go is one thing, but the actual portability is second. But you already knew that, didn't you. Not saying I agree with the "One must be living under a rock to buy anything but Apple" part, that's nonsense.
      - db48x 6y ago
        Sure, having a laptop in that case is unavoidable, but you won't _require_ 10 hours of battery life either. In the long term I don't think laptops are exactly the right answer for portability. I think the ideal would be that when we get up from our desks, all of our running programs (even the whole OS) would migrate to our phones. As soon as we open our laptop, they would all migrate there.
    - woah 6y ago
      That’s just your opinion. You don’t need large monitors to code (lines of code are 80-100 characters), and moving around and changing positions (desk to couch etc) every couple hours while working is generally better for health and concentration. Not having to hunt around for a power adapter makes it that much easier and better.
    - kuschku 6y ago
      Using a laptop for 10h is super useful for days where you have to travel somewhere, have an appointment, and travel another 5h by train back. Avoids having to constantly have it plugged in in the train, and allows using it even in trains without power sockets
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  In most programming benchmarks, single core and RAM is the game. That’s why the machine in this post has overclocked ram and an undervolted CPU. In that area the 4750u loses badly. In Node for example you will see nearly 60% better performance on M1.
  - pizzazzaro 6y ago
    Please tell me Im not alone in typing "make -j7" to use those several cores, and have one free. And thats before we start talking about hyperthreading.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    Also benchmarks are biased towards multicore use cases, probably because slow things that feel like heavy computation are more commonly had parallelization efforts put into them, and are fun to benchmark.
  - agloeregrets 6y ago
    (I am wondering why that got downvoted, perhaps it upset someone.) the 4750u sits at around a 1050pt GB5 single threaded score while the 5800x (with tweaks detailed in the article) scores ~1800. The M1 is 1700 or so. The 4750U just isn’t there for things like Node and scores similarly to Intel’s best desktop CPUs which are real world 50% slower at these very tasks than the M1 (or I imagine, this 5800x)
    - rfoo 6y ago
      Dunno, maybe because compared to Node.js developers, C/C++/Rust developers have more time to burn on HN (due to their multithreaded build still takes ages), so they are more likely to show up and make a downvote? Joke aside, claiming "In most programming benchmarks, single core and RAM is the game" is far from truth.
eertami 6y ago
>Doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, microphone, battery backup, and fingerprint scanner which would be necessary to make it "comparable" to a base model Macbook Air. Let us not pretend that you don't need to also buy a keyboard, monitor, speakers, and mouse for the Macbook Air to be in anyway usable.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Let us not pretend that you don't need to also buy a keyboard, monitor, speakers, and mouse for the Macbook Air to be in anyway usable. Having worked on Mac laptops for the last 8 years without external keyboard, monitor, speakers or mouse, I beg to differ.
Xevi 6y ago
Neither does the Mac Mini, what's your point? If you're building your own desktop PC, then you're clearly not comparing it to a laptop. On top of that, Apple charges $300 (in Sweden) for every 8GB of RAM, and $300 for every 500GB of SSD storage you add. The costs quickly even out. Unless you buy the absolute cheapest Mac Mini version, a self-built PC will be cheaper, at least according to the PCs I've built.

speedgoose 6y ago

And you have to assemble the pc and install an operating system on it. It's really not comparable.

tonyhb 6y ago
You also have to unbox each component vs' just the macbook air, am I right? Sarcasm aside, I don't think assembling a PC has any factor in performance/price here...
- speedgoose 6y ago
  My company doesn't really want to pay me to assemble a PC.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  @dang Someone flagged my comments. I think they were very normal, about the value of a MacBook air M1 compared to buying parts and assembling a PC, but perhaps they were against the rules.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

There are plenty of 8 core/16 thread Ryzen 4750U laptops for around the same price that outclass the M1 in multicore benchmarks.

tastyminerals 6y ago
It may outclass it in performance. However, all my life I've been waiting for something that runs over 10h on a single charge. I am naturally surprised that this is not something that ppl truly appreciate in a laptop. Hell, I even bought a cheap Atom laptop once just to have more battery time. So as of now, there's literally no decent competitor to M1 laptops. One must be living under a rock to buy anything but Apple and this is coming from someone who doesn't have Apple products and always hated their walled off ecosystem. I am reconsidering my life choices :)
- db48x 6y ago
  Using a laptop screen for 10 hours a day is a waste of a day, and if you're at your desk with multiple monitors then you don't need a laptop.
  - Toutouxc 6y ago
    What if I want to use the same machine both at my desk and at work? The ability to use the machine on-the-go is one thing, but the actual portability is second. But you already knew that, didn't you. Not saying I agree with the "One must be living under a rock to buy anything but Apple" part, that's nonsense.
    - db48x 6y ago
      Sure, having a laptop in that case is unavoidable, but you won't _require_ 10 hours of battery life either. In the long term I don't think laptops are exactly the right answer for portability. I think the ideal would be that when we get up from our desks, all of our running programs (even the whole OS) would migrate to our phones. As soon as we open our laptop, they would all migrate there.
  - woah 6y ago
    That’s just your opinion. You don’t need large monitors to code (lines of code are 80-100 characters), and moving around and changing positions (desk to couch etc) every couple hours while working is generally better for health and concentration. Not having to hunt around for a power adapter makes it that much easier and better.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    Using a laptop for 10h is super useful for days where you have to travel somewhere, have an appointment, and travel another 5h by train back. Avoids having to constantly have it plugged in in the train, and allows using it even in trains without power sockets
agloeregrets 6y ago
In most programming benchmarks, single core and RAM is the game. That’s why the machine in this post has overclocked ram and an undervolted CPU. In that area the 4750u loses badly. In Node for example you will see nearly 60% better performance on M1.
- pizzazzaro 6y ago
  Please tell me Im not alone in typing "make -j7" to use those several cores, and have one free. And thats before we start talking about hyperthreading.
- fulafel 6y ago
  Also benchmarks are biased towards multicore use cases, probably because slow things that feel like heavy computation are more commonly had parallelization efforts put into them, and are fun to benchmark.
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  (I am wondering why that got downvoted, perhaps it upset someone.) the 4750u sits at around a 1050pt GB5 single threaded score while the 5800x (with tweaks detailed in the article) scores ~1800. The M1 is 1700 or so. The 4750U just isn’t there for things like Node and scores similarly to Intel’s best desktop CPUs which are real world 50% slower at these very tasks than the M1 (or I imagine, this 5800x)
  - rfoo 6y ago
    Dunno, maybe because compared to Node.js developers, C/C++/Rust developers have more time to burn on HN (due to their multithreaded build still takes ages), so they are more likely to show up and make a downvote? Joke aside, claiming "In most programming benchmarks, single core and RAM is the game" is far from truth.

eertami 6y ago

>Doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, microphone, battery backup, and fingerprint scanner which would be necessary to make it "comparable" to a base model Macbook Air. Let us not pretend that you don't need to also buy a keyboard, monitor, speakers, and mouse for the Macbook Air to be in anyway usable.

zimpenfish 6y ago
> Let us not pretend that you don't need to also buy a keyboard, monitor, speakers, and mouse for the Macbook Air to be in anyway usable. Having worked on Mac laptops for the last 8 years without external keyboard, monitor, speakers or mouse, I beg to differ.

Xevi 6y ago

Neither does the Mac Mini, what's your point? If you're building your own desktop PC, then you're clearly not comparing it to a laptop. On top of that, Apple charges $300 (in Sweden) for every 8GB of RAM, and $300 for every 500GB of SSD storage you add. The costs quickly even out. Unless you buy the absolute cheapest Mac Mini version, a self-built PC will be cheaper, at least according to the PCs I've built.