5 ms·

1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your

1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your legs EDIT: sorry! forgot the basic rules: don't dismiss bitcoins, don't engage with Apple users. My fault.

ben-schaaf 6y ago
The thermal load matters for battery consumption.
- africanboy 6y ago
  my 400$, 6 years old Chinese entry level laptop does 8 hours on battery...
  - valuearb 6y ago
    My raspberry pi does 9 hours.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    Your post is a poor fit for the collective mindhive here and it makes me uneasy. I better downvote it.
    - africanboy 6y ago
      Keep calm and everything will be fine.
blunte 6y ago
For the historical HN crowd, a MacBook Air less than $2000 is definitely entry level. My high end Dell XPS was $2600, and the M1 Air blows it away for half the price.
- africanboy 6y ago
  > For the historical HN crowd, a MacBook Air less than $2000 is definitely entry level. so basically 99% of the laptops are entry level... Anyway the full optional Macbook Air on the Italian Apple website costs € 2.349,00
  - asutekku 6y ago
    Which just has a bigger storage, but the performance is the same as in the cheapest one. There’s no point taking the most expensive option and try to invalidate the results because of it. And yes, for development sub $1000 laptops are entry level.
    - africanboy 6y ago
      16GB of RAM are the bear minimum in 2021 By simply upgrading the RAM from 8 to 16GB the MacBook Air cost goes up to € 1.389,00 Which is a lot to me for only 256GB of SSD storage
- eertami 6y ago
  >My high end Dell XPS was $2600, and the M1 Air blows it away for half the price. Isn't "blowing it away" a little hyperbole? An XPS with 1185G7 has around ~10% worse single core and ~25% worse multi-core CPU performance than the M1. An improvement sure, but not the leap some people make it out to be. I don't notice a 10% worse single core performance, but what I do notice is going OOM because the Air is limited to 16GB RAM (base model 8GB is personally unusable in 2021). Or being limited to 1 external display due to the design of the M1. Apple silicon needs to support at least 2 external displays before I can consider one and I'm honestly surprised they currently do not. The next generation of Apple chips might be useful, particularly if linux kernel support improves too. A 2023 Macbook Pro has a lot of potential.
  - minhazm 6y ago
    The XPS 13 is also limited to 16 GB of RAM, and it's actually more expensive than a M1 Macbook Air, so I'm not sure why you're using that as a comparison. Even if you bump the Air to 16gb of RAM and 512GB SSD it's still $50 cheaper than the comparable XPS 13 which is $1499, which btw has a worse 1920x1200 screen vs the 2560x1600 one on the Air. I'm not sure what source you're using for performance. But at least with Geekbench 5 results it's not as close as you're saying. The M1 Macbook Air scores 1699 in single core, and 7362 in multi-core[1]. The Intel Core i7-1185G7 scores 1446 in single core and 4924 in multi-core[2]. That's about 18% better single-core and 50% better multi-core performance, for me that's a pretty big difference. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks
unix_fan 6y ago
A 15 W mobile chip would be considered entry level for most laptops.
wil421 6y ago
A MacBook Air is 100% entry level.
- omegabravo 6y ago
  MacBook Air costs 3x the price of a Dell Inspiron. The Mac laptops seem to be great (I've never owned one, have ordered one though), but they're not entry level. It might be Apple's entry level, but it's not the markets entry level.
  - minhazm 6y ago
    For someone who is using Photoshop as a professional, $999 really is not far off from entry-level. People easily spend $2500+ on computers for professional work that requires high performance. Sure you can use a $350 Dell Inspiron for Photoshop work, but it's not going to be very practical. Performance, battery life, and even the actual screen will be pretty poor at that price point.
    - africanboy 6y ago
      though, Photoshop professional work is not entry level. My uncle is a woodworker, his tools are not entry level. He doesn't buy the best of the best the market can offer, far from it, but his tools are not entry level. they can be considered entry level only if you compare them with the state of the art in his field of work. Entry level of the high end segment maybe.
moreira 6y ago
I think they might be referring to the power used by the chip, which is indeed comparable to entry-level chips. The thought is that if it runs this fast right now, imagine what it’ll be like when you put a big heat sink and fan on it and let it use 100w or something, on a Mac Pro. And more - this is a first generation product. Imagine what the second generation will be like. I think people are just excited for the possibilities. We’ll see how it all turns out, but it really does seem promising.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- africanboy 6y ago
  > I think they might be referring to the power used by the chip, which is indeed comparable to entry-level chips. Is it? the Core i3 530 consumes 73 Watts the AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS consumes 35 Watts
  - moreira 6y ago
    The i3-530 is a 10-year old desktop CPU, so of course it uses more power. The M1 can go up to 39w, which is comparable to the Ryzen you mentioned. I didn’t know either, and looked it up before commenting to make sure I didn’t make any wildly incorrect claims. The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201897 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201897
    - africanboy 6y ago
      that's absolutely true The i3 desktop CPU is an entry level CPU because it can still handle entry level workloads, consuming a lot more energy than the state of the art because providing high end performances while consuming less energy than the competitors is not worth the entry level segment money. Entry level means (IMO) good enough for as little money as possible in a non pro field (as in: your salary do not depend on the performances of the device) M1 Macs are not in that segment. > The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers. 100% agree
simonh 6y ago
They're comparing entry level Macs to high end Macs, or processors equivalent to them. That's the context.
danlugo92 6y ago
> 1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3 It depends on how you see it: The M1 is the entry level chip for the whole upcoming M-series, this is a logical FACT. It's hard to estimate how much an M1 costs but I would say it's closer to an i5 than to an i3 simply because the price tags can afford it. Apple could make a profitable $350 plastic laptop with some kind of watered down m1 chip, they just don't want to. > 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your legs It's in the name.... "LAP" "TOP", regardless this is not about temperate, this is about efficiency. The 18 hours battery life works both on and off your laps ;).
- Joeri 6y ago
  The m1 is basically the a14, which is rumored to go into the $350 base ipad real soon now. That’s their profitable entry level laptop.
  - minhazm 6y ago
    They're similar, but it is not "basically the a14". This is like saying that an Intel Core i9 is basically the same as a Core i5. Sure it has a lot of similarities, but they have very different thermal and performance characteristics. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318715-comparison-of-apple-m1-a14-shows-differences-in-soc-design https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318715-comparison-of-a...

ben-schaaf 6y ago

The thermal load matters for battery consumption.

africanboy 6y ago
my 400$, 6 years old Chinese entry level laptop does 8 hours on battery...
- valuearb 6y ago
  My raspberry pi does 9 hours.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  Your post is a poor fit for the collective mindhive here and it makes me uneasy. I better downvote it.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    Keep calm and everything will be fine.

blunte 6y ago

For the historical HN crowd, a MacBook Air less than $2000 is definitely entry level. My high end Dell XPS was $2600, and the M1 Air blows it away for half the price.

africanboy 6y ago
> For the historical HN crowd, a MacBook Air less than $2000 is definitely entry level. so basically 99% of the laptops are entry level... Anyway the full optional Macbook Air on the Italian Apple website costs € 2.349,00
- asutekku 6y ago
  Which just has a bigger storage, but the performance is the same as in the cheapest one. There’s no point taking the most expensive option and try to invalidate the results because of it. And yes, for development sub $1000 laptops are entry level.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    16GB of RAM are the bear minimum in 2021 By simply upgrading the RAM from 8 to 16GB the MacBook Air cost goes up to € 1.389,00 Which is a lot to me for only 256GB of SSD storage
eertami 6y ago
>My high end Dell XPS was $2600, and the M1 Air blows it away for half the price. Isn't "blowing it away" a little hyperbole? An XPS with 1185G7 has around ~10% worse single core and ~25% worse multi-core CPU performance than the M1. An improvement sure, but not the leap some people make it out to be. I don't notice a 10% worse single core performance, but what I do notice is going OOM because the Air is limited to 16GB RAM (base model 8GB is personally unusable in 2021). Or being limited to 1 external display due to the design of the M1. Apple silicon needs to support at least 2 external displays before I can consider one and I'm honestly surprised they currently do not. The next generation of Apple chips might be useful, particularly if linux kernel support improves too. A 2023 Macbook Pro has a lot of potential.
- minhazm 6y ago
  The XPS 13 is also limited to 16 GB of RAM, and it's actually more expensive than a M1 Macbook Air, so I'm not sure why you're using that as a comparison. Even if you bump the Air to 16gb of RAM and 512GB SSD it's still $50 cheaper than the comparable XPS 13 which is $1499, which btw has a worse 1920x1200 screen vs the 2560x1600 one on the Air. I'm not sure what source you're using for performance. But at least with Geekbench 5 results it's not as close as you're saying. The M1 Macbook Air scores 1699 in single core, and 7362 in multi-core[1]. The Intel Core i7-1185G7 scores 1446 in single core and 4924 in multi-core[2]. That's about 18% better single-core and 50% better multi-core performance, for me that's a pretty big difference. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

unix_fan 6y ago

A 15 W mobile chip would be considered entry level for most laptops.

wil421 6y ago

A MacBook Air is 100% entry level.

omegabravo 6y ago
MacBook Air costs 3x the price of a Dell Inspiron. The Mac laptops seem to be great (I've never owned one, have ordered one though), but they're not entry level. It might be Apple's entry level, but it's not the markets entry level.
- minhazm 6y ago
  For someone who is using Photoshop as a professional, $999 really is not far off from entry-level. People easily spend $2500+ on computers for professional work that requires high performance. Sure you can use a $350 Dell Inspiron for Photoshop work, but it's not going to be very practical. Performance, battery life, and even the actual screen will be pretty poor at that price point.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    though, Photoshop professional work is not entry level. My uncle is a woodworker, his tools are not entry level. He doesn't buy the best of the best the market can offer, far from it, but his tools are not entry level. they can be considered entry level only if you compare them with the state of the art in his field of work. Entry level of the high end segment maybe.

moreira 6y ago

I think they might be referring to the power used by the chip, which is indeed comparable to entry-level chips. The thought is that if it runs this fast right now, imagine what it’ll be like when you put a big heat sink and fan on it and let it use 100w or something, on a Mac Pro. And more - this is a first generation product. Imagine what the second generation will be like. I think people are just excited for the possibilities. We’ll see how it all turns out, but it really does seem promising.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
africanboy 6y ago
> I think they might be referring to the power used by the chip, which is indeed comparable to entry-level chips. Is it? the Core i3 530 consumes 73 Watts the AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS consumes 35 Watts
- moreira 6y ago
  The i3-530 is a 10-year old desktop CPU, so of course it uses more power. The M1 can go up to 39w, which is comparable to the Ryzen you mentioned. I didn’t know either, and looked it up before commenting to make sure I didn’t make any wildly incorrect claims. The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201897 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201897
  - africanboy 6y ago
    that's absolutely true The i3 desktop CPU is an entry level CPU because it can still handle entry level workloads, consuming a lot more energy than the state of the art because providing high end performances while consuming less energy than the competitors is not worth the entry level segment money. Entry level means (IMO) good enough for as little money as possible in a non pro field (as in: your salary do not depend on the performances of the device) M1 Macs are not in that segment. > The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers. 100% agree

simonh 6y ago

They're comparing entry level Macs to high end Macs, or processors equivalent to them. That's the context.

danlugo92 6y ago

> 1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3 It depends on how you see it: The M1 is the entry level chip for the whole upcoming M-series, this is a logical FACT. It's hard to estimate how much an M1 costs but I would say it's closer to an i5 than to an i3 simply because the price tags can afford it. Apple could make a profitable $350 plastic laptop with some kind of watered down m1 chip, they just don't want to. > 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your legs It's in the name.... "LAP" "TOP", regardless this is not about temperate, this is about efficiency. The 18 hours battery life works both on and off your laps ;).

Joeri 6y ago
The m1 is basically the a14, which is rumored to go into the $350 base ipad real soon now. That’s their profitable entry level laptop.
- minhazm 6y ago
  They're similar, but it is not "basically the a14". This is like saying that an Intel Core i9 is basically the same as a Core i5. Sure it has a lot of similarities, but they have very different thermal and performance characteristics. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318715-comparison-of-apple-m1-a14-shows-differences-in-soc-design https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318715-comparison-of-a...