5 ms·

It also costs at least 2.6x as much¹ so the question becomes "do you get a 2.6x productivity gain as well?" 1. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/1

by qayxc 5y ago

It also costs at least 2.6x as much¹ so the question becomes "do you get a 2.6x productivity gain as well?" 1. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inch-space-gray-8-core-cpu-14-core-gpu-512gb# https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inch-space... configured with 32GiB RAM and 1TB SSD for $2599

KptMarchewa 5y ago
> It also costs at least 2.6x as much¹ so the question becomes "do you get a 2.6x productivity gain as well?" Wrong question. You're comparing different values. Even 5-10% productivity gain can offset the 2.6x difference.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Exactly. If your time is expensive (as it is for most senior developers in first world markets), even 15% more productivity could easily pay the price premium in very little time.
- qayxc 5y ago
  That depends entirely on the circumstances (whether the performance increase of the local machine can get you that, that is). It's really a very specific niche that's targeted here: namely mobile(!) video editing and -production. There are very few use cases these days that benefit from a high-performance mobile (cannot stress this enough) solution. So unless your specific use case benefits at all from local processing power, I'd argue that it'd be hard to even get a 5% productivity increase that cannot be reached by other means (better/bigger display, more ergonomic peripherals, optimised workflow, etc.). I'm not denying the fact that even a 5% improvement may justify the price difference. I'm just questioning whether the improvement in performance can meaningfully contribute to that in most use cases.
- nickjj 5y ago
  > Even 5-10% productivity gain can offset the 2.6x difference. I think this heavily depends on what you're gaining. I think for a lot of tasks or scenarios it's not worth it. Especially around things like video encoding. For example if you're a solo worker and you need to batch render 10 hours of video and your computer is essentially unusable for that time you would do this action overnight. If rendering everything finishes in 5 hours instead of 6 hours that doesn't matter because you're sleeping. If you need to render a quick 1 off video that takes 10 minutes there's a bunch of semi-productive things you can do while that finishes and it finishing in 9 minutes instead won't make a noticeable difference. Now you might say if you're a professional video renderer you'll want to render videos during business hours as fast as possible in which case if you're operating at that scale you wouldn't use your daily laptop to do the rendering. You would remotely render it on a dedicated server (this is how most "pro" places work). This way you can comfortably edit video #2 while video #1 is rendering. Even 6 year old hardware that costs $800 all-in can give you sub-100ms code reload times in most Rails, Django, Phoenix, Laravel and Node web apps even with Webpack or esbuild running -- even running within Docker on Windows (WSL 2) or native Linux. Also all major code editors can run well without input latency. That's a decently large amount of "pro" web development use cases. Unless you're doing hardcore continuous compiling in a spot where you expect to do this sequentially on your main laptop I can't really see a 10% gain being worth a 2.5x+ cost increase for most dev work.
  - sbst32 5y ago
    For video editing the productivity gains are mainly in the editing, not in the rendering. Rendering time is more like a performance metric. More responsive editing process, effortless real-time previews - these are the real gains.
    - nickjj 5y ago
      For sure but a 10% gain isn't a gain if you already reached your target goal of smoothness. For example if you can edit at $your_target_resolution and everything is liquid smooth without dropping frames even with a decent amount of effects then any improvement is overkill. I'm sure for crazy high end set ups (8k video, etc.) an M1 Max would be nice but for other folks editing 1080p or 1440p videos at 30-60 fps you can get liquid smooth editing even with ~5-6 year old hardware that costs $1,000 all-in (a bit more expensive now due to GPU prices being temporarily crazy in price).
matwood 5y ago
As the other person mentioned even a small productivity difference can offset the cost. And we haven't even touched on QoL items like trackpads, screens, and battery life. Everyone is so focused on AS it feels like the screens are not being talked about enough.
- qayxc 5y ago
  As I mentioned, QoL items can be had externally for substantially less money (e.g. displays, mice, keyboards). The improvement only materialises in a very niche use case (e.g. primarily mobile workplaces with virtually no additional weight/space for things like mice).
keymone 5y ago
Being X% faster while consuming Y% less energy and therefore being Z% quieter and having W% longer battery life absolutely outweighs 2.6x price. Add build quality, longevity, resell value, this isn’t even fair, the laptop market is basically garbage or Apple these days.
- laurent92 5y ago
  We have one guy with the Dell XPS in the office. This laptop keeps making noise…
johanneskanybal 5y ago
The cost of equipment is negligible compared to the personell cost so unless your machines work by themselves that's not very relevant. That's why professionals and the people having to pay and maintain them care so much about quality and ease.

by qayxc 5y ago

KptMarchewa 5y ago

> It also costs at least 2.6x as much¹ so the question becomes "do you get a 2.6x productivity gain as well?" Wrong question. You're comparing different values. Even 5-10% productivity gain can offset the 2.6x difference.

elzbardico 5y ago
Exactly. If your time is expensive (as it is for most senior developers in first world markets), even 15% more productivity could easily pay the price premium in very little time.
qayxc 5y ago
That depends entirely on the circumstances (whether the performance increase of the local machine can get you that, that is). It's really a very specific niche that's targeted here: namely mobile(!) video editing and -production. There are very few use cases these days that benefit from a high-performance mobile (cannot stress this enough) solution. So unless your specific use case benefits at all from local processing power, I'd argue that it'd be hard to even get a 5% productivity increase that cannot be reached by other means (better/bigger display, more ergonomic peripherals, optimised workflow, etc.). I'm not denying the fact that even a 5% improvement may justify the price difference. I'm just questioning whether the improvement in performance can meaningfully contribute to that in most use cases.
nickjj 5y ago
> Even 5-10% productivity gain can offset the 2.6x difference. I think this heavily depends on what you're gaining. I think for a lot of tasks or scenarios it's not worth it. Especially around things like video encoding. For example if you're a solo worker and you need to batch render 10 hours of video and your computer is essentially unusable for that time you would do this action overnight. If rendering everything finishes in 5 hours instead of 6 hours that doesn't matter because you're sleeping. If you need to render a quick 1 off video that takes 10 minutes there's a bunch of semi-productive things you can do while that finishes and it finishing in 9 minutes instead won't make a noticeable difference. Now you might say if you're a professional video renderer you'll want to render videos during business hours as fast as possible in which case if you're operating at that scale you wouldn't use your daily laptop to do the rendering. You would remotely render it on a dedicated server (this is how most "pro" places work). This way you can comfortably edit video #2 while video #1 is rendering. Even 6 year old hardware that costs $800 all-in can give you sub-100ms code reload times in most Rails, Django, Phoenix, Laravel and Node web apps even with Webpack or esbuild running -- even running within Docker on Windows (WSL 2) or native Linux. Also all major code editors can run well without input latency. That's a decently large amount of "pro" web development use cases. Unless you're doing hardcore continuous compiling in a spot where you expect to do this sequentially on your main laptop I can't really see a 10% gain being worth a 2.5x+ cost increase for most dev work.
- sbst32 5y ago
  For video editing the productivity gains are mainly in the editing, not in the rendering. Rendering time is more like a performance metric. More responsive editing process, effortless real-time previews - these are the real gains.
  - nickjj 5y ago
    For sure but a 10% gain isn't a gain if you already reached your target goal of smoothness. For example if you can edit at $your_target_resolution and everything is liquid smooth without dropping frames even with a decent amount of effects then any improvement is overkill. I'm sure for crazy high end set ups (8k video, etc.) an M1 Max would be nice but for other folks editing 1080p or 1440p videos at 30-60 fps you can get liquid smooth editing even with ~5-6 year old hardware that costs $1,000 all-in (a bit more expensive now due to GPU prices being temporarily crazy in price).

matwood 5y ago

As the other person mentioned even a small productivity difference can offset the cost. And we haven't even touched on QoL items like trackpads, screens, and battery life. Everyone is so focused on AS it feels like the screens are not being talked about enough.

qayxc 5y ago
As I mentioned, QoL items can be had externally for substantially less money (e.g. displays, mice, keyboards). The improvement only materialises in a very niche use case (e.g. primarily mobile workplaces with virtually no additional weight/space for things like mice).

keymone 5y ago

Being X% faster while consuming Y% less energy and therefore being Z% quieter and having W% longer battery life absolutely outweighs 2.6x price. Add build quality, longevity, resell value, this isn’t even fair, the laptop market is basically garbage or Apple these days.

laurent92 5y ago
We have one guy with the Dell XPS in the office. This laptop keeps making noise…

johanneskanybal 5y ago

The cost of equipment is negligible compared to the personell cost so unless your machines work by themselves that's not very relevant. That's why professionals and the people having to pay and maintain them care so much about quality and ease.