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power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) f

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

saagarjha 5y ago
There's a new set of Apple silicon Macs that go all the way up to 64 GB of RAM, although you'll pay a premium for it.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  premium = an arm and a leg. My 7 years old Lenovo laptop mounts 64gb of RAM and 2 1TB ssds. It costed less than a Mac M1 Pro 7 years later.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    I suspect that your workload that uses 64 GB of RAM and 2 1 TB SSDs could benefit from an extremely fast processor.
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is. I could understand 20% more, but not two times. Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market. They simply will never be mainstream. My answer was to I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead I would! CPU alone doesn't sell notebooks to non-tech people on a budget
      - dagw 5y ago
        The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. But only sacrificing something else, like screen, battery life and/or build quality. I bought a M1 Pro, not primarily because of its performance, but because it was the cheapest way to get the performance I wanted without sacrificing battery life or build quality in a hardware/software package I could trust to Just Work out of the box.
        semi-extrinsic 5y ago
        What do you sacrifice if you get e.g. an Asus ROG Strix G15 ? It is benchmarking pretty close to the M1 Pro, and you can get it for around $1800.
        dagw 5y ago
        Weight and real world battery life would be two things. Almost certainly build quality. The screen almost certainly isn't as nice. Even if the overall 'macro' bench marks are the same, it almost certainly won't beat the Macbook in day to day 'micro benchmarks' I care about like time to open a new terminal, time to run npm install, time to wake when I open the lid, time from login to watching Netflix, time to search the hard drive for file etc. etc. If I need 'real' performance I'll use a chunky Ryzen/Threadripper desktop computer running Linux over any laptop on the market. Also I just don't trust Windows laptops to go to sleep properly when I shut the lid. With both high end Dell and Lenovo laptops I've on more than one occasion pulled out a scorching hot laptop with a dead battery out of my bag. Never had a Mac do that. It may be a small thing, but I'm willing to pay a pretty decent premium to never have that happen again. Plus there's the fact that something almost certainly won't just work if I try to install a *nix based operating system on it. edit: Oh yea another big one, with the Mac I get a trackpad good enough that I don't feel the need to carry a mouse.
        O_H_E 5y ago
        > Even if the overall 'macro' bench marks are the same, it almost certainly won't beat the Macbook in day to day 'micro benchmarks' I care about like time to open a new terminal, time to run npm install, time to wake when I open the lid, time from login to watching Netflix, time to search the hard drive for file etc. etc. Yeah! I feel like I have been needing a word for that for sometime. Never had a mac, but surprisingly I have the same exact experience with my IT_managed_Dell+Windows+Antivirus vs my 6yo thinkpad with linux (even months of uptime) even plain process spawning from powershell is slow, that AV is just hell.
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      Such as a high end Ryzen, which eats the M1 for breakfast ? Sure.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        The M1 chips that have been released certainly can't compete on core count against desktop chips with Zen 3 cores, but compared to the laptop versions of Ryzen, the M1 is absolutely not being eaten for breakfast. >The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
        ohgodplsno 5y ago
        This article is one of the few anandtech articles which is just straight up wrong and/or incomplete on many points, notably only comparing to (relatively) old desktop chips. A 5900HX (released in January) scores 50% higher on multithreading on cinebench, and equal on single threaded tests like Geekbench. A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you. So, really, what this is saying is that a brand new, constructor specific 5nm SoC that is tailor made with a CPU/memory quasi-direct link is about equal to a year and a half old 7nm CPU, while being twice as expensive. As much as the Apple fanboys can scream about pOwEr EfFiCciEnCy!1, making up a $1500 difference just in electricity costs is going to be hard. Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.
        nicoburns 5y ago
        > A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you. Confused. The MacBook Pro is also available from $2500.
        simonh 5y ago
        > Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop I see you subscribe to the John Hodgman school of laptop design. https://youtu.be/gHG0cT_ck00 https://youtu.be/gHG0cT_ck00
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
I suspect you'll get downvoted into oblivion for your PoV by the pro-Apple HN crowd and even though I do agree with you to some extent on the the high pricing (a basic M1 MacBook is half my NET take home pay as a dev in Europe, and double my rent costs) but value is subjective to most people, and for most, buying into the Apple ecosystem the value the ecosystem brings to their lives is justified, otherwise they wouldn't buy it in the first place (it's not a Prada handbag). Especially for high income earners from wealthy western countries, the cost of ownership can be easily justified for the convenience it brings. But if you're not currently into the Apple ecosystem, and consider going all-in, the total costs of ownership are indeed a bit eye-watering for those without six figure jobs, if you disregard or don't need or don't care about the whole ecosystem and just look at the specs to price ratio of the laptop on it's own (I got a 13 inch QHD thin and light laptop with an 8 core Ryzen 5800U and 16GB RAM and 1TB NVME removable!!! SSD and 8 hour battery life for 750 Euros, where I can dual-boot Linux and Windows and run absolutely any (non-Apple)SW I could ever need). So, since I don't need any component of the Apple ecosystem, I can't justify spending double the money to get more limited functionality in return, though I am tech savvy enough to use Windows and Linux and create for myself a similar (and subjectively better) ecosystem to Apple's for cheap/free using various OSS and proprietary SW. However, lost of doctors I visit and most high-earners I know seem to own Macs and iPhones, so for them most likely it's worth the extra penny for the magic of the ecosystem where everything Justworks(TM) and they don't have to spend extra time learning and fiddling with tech related stuff they don't care for. And TBH, if I didn't have to worry about money, and didn't have a career and hobbies that required the need to run X86_X64 binaries and Android apps, then I'd probably go all-in on the latest Apple MacBook Pros with extra-ports plus iPhone ecosystem for the convenience and time savings.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  well, truth is Apple MacBook Air 13 with 16 GB of RAM is listed at € 1.429 on the Italian Apple web site. My sister bought a Lenovo thinkbook with a Ryzen 7, 16 GB of RAM (upgradable up to 32) for € 729 My 3D artist friend an Asus ROG 14 with an NVidia GPU and 32GB of RAM for € 1.780 and he's using it to render complex scenes. Does the increase in performance justify the ridiculous price? It doesn't, in my opinion. Also, Apple doesn't want to be a mainstream company, their market is never gonna be huge, premium prices are only justifiable if the product is somewhat exclusive.
hvgk 5y ago
A $200 smartphone isn’t enough for most people. They’ve been sold that ideology but all I see is people struggling with them constantly assuming that’s the best of the future in their hands.
GeneralMaximus 5y ago
While I've recently stopped using Macs as my primary computers, I can definitely see the appeal of Apple computers for a large segment of the population. E.g I still have my old MacBook around for running Ableton, because support for pro audio on both Windows and Linux is not great. Linux is almost there with PipeWire support landing in most major distros, but Windows still requires a lot of fiddling with drivers and random EXEs downloaded off the web to get a reasonable setup going. And I'm not even an audio professional, just a hobbyist with very mainstream hardware. I suspect a lot of media/design/film professionals are in the same boat. Not to mention software developers who want a smoother experience than Windows/Linux can give them. This has always been Apple's market and they don't care about anyone else.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  God I wish Ableton would support Linux, but I don't think it'll happen.
boplicity 5y ago
> who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 years old. It was very expensive when I bought it, but the "cost per hour" has actually been quite low. The benefit of a better experience during the entire duration of usage is well worth the added cost, in my experience.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- riquito 5y ago
  You're confirming OP point though, you didn't upgrade in 8 years, because for your use case it was good enough and not worth the expense
  - MathCodeLove 5y ago
    If they had instead bought a $700 laptop 8 years ago, they likely would have had to upgrade several times by now.
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      800 dollar laptops today are more durable than M1 with max 16 GB of RAM at double the price, because their RAM is actually upgradable most of the time. It's so funny see Mac fans argue about everything and its contrary that it's worth the obvious down votes.
      - tonguez 5y ago
        "800 dollar laptops today are more durable ... because their RAM is ... upgradable" I think the word durable has more of a connotation of being resistant to damage rather than meaning "able to be used for a long time".
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
I am not what you would call an Apple fan still I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16Gb of RAM in France for around 1200€ a couple of months ago (to replace an early 2011 Macbook Pro - I don't change my personal laptop often). While I would never buy a Macbook Pro, I think the Air pricing was fine. The price is pretty close to other ultraportables, performances are very good, battery life is incredible, the screen is beautiful and I don't mind paying a small premium for a sleek design and good quality control. I don't feel like I wasted my money.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  I'm looking at prices on the French Apple website and it says 7 cores GPU / 16GB RAM / 256GB SSD 1.359 euros https://i.imgur.com/udZSqAz.png https://i.imgur.com/udZSqAz.png 8 core GPU / 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD 1.629 euros https://i.imgur.com/QacUu2X.png https://i.imgur.com/QacUu2X.png I'm not saying it isn't the price people will pay, I'm only saying it's a price point that will convince people to upgrade, but won't allow Apple market to expand in a meaningful way. Apple had already a boom years ago, I still remember Peter Jackson editing LOTR on set with his MacBook Pro + Final cut. Then Apple stagnated and studios replaced their Macs with PCs. Now maybe they will buy Macs again, it's a cycle, it's the same market shrinking a little and expanding a little over time. Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    It's not interesting to buy these laptops straight from Apple. Large national resellers like Darty or Fnac offer better services and discount them very often. > Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives. I have a very different reading of the market. I don't think iPhones are priced competitively. They are not really better than Android phones which are far cheaper. That's why they have such a ridiculously low market share in Europe. The Macbook Air is competitively priced however. Its price is in line with the rest of the market and it is a good cost to value offered proposition.
    - dagw 5y ago
cassianoleal 5y ago
I have replaced my Core i9 with 32Gb RAM with an M1 Air with 16Gb RAM and couldn't be happier. I work as a platform engineer, code mostly in Go and Python, run VMs and containers as well as some crappy resource-hungry apps like Slack and Signal all day long, and have never felt the need for more RAM on this machine. YMMV, of course, but 16Gb on an Apple Silicon machine takes you a lot farther than you would imagine. I have co-workers who go by daily with 8Gb M1 machines.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  I monitor the RAM usage of my work machine with prometheus, and I haven't been above 16GB yet. This is on a machine with 40GB RAM and swappiness set to 1 (don't swap unless you reeeeeeeaaaalllyyyy have to). This is running Linux rather than macos though, but it shouldn't really matter. I do have loads of web junk loaded. (Slack, Gmail, Gcal, YT music, Fastmail, plenty of browser tabs)
markphip 5y ago
These are pure guesses on my part, but I would guess that 99% of laptops that are sold each year are purchased with 16GB or less RAM and 99% of laptops that have been sold all time have never had their RAM upgraded. So I would also guess the number of people willing to buy one of these is pretty high. I purchased the MacBook Air and love it. So fast, so quiet. Could I afford it? Yes. But I also typically use a Mac for 5-7 years so I did not consider it overly expensive.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Not this year, I've seen lots of laptops coming out starting at 32GB at reasonable prices, pretty sure your 99% is more like 80-90%
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Most people spend a lot of time on the computer. I can't imagine working around a half screen of data and halfscreen of a keyboard. Make a proper wireless docking station and give me a keyboard and mouse and monitor and then we'll talk. After about half hour staring at a phone screen I'm ready to throw it through a window from the eye strain. I think laptops/desktops will be with us for a while longer.
sharikous 5y ago
not sure what's your point.. A wholeful lot of working people need a computer, a phone is not enough. A laptop that has top notch battery performance and can handle heavy work at the same time, being also very lightweight, has a lot of pluses. The fact that it is well built and that it is battery efficient is, that alone, sort of an insurance policy. I can see many occasions arising in a timespan of some years where a professional could lose a lot of money if its main work device proves to be unreliable at a wrong moment. It might be more than those 1500 euros depending on the field.
kaba0 5y ago
Are there any other laptop currently on the market with similar performance and battery life? It’s not like M1s are the exact same as the models before.

saagarjha 5y ago

There's a new set of Apple silicon Macs that go all the way up to 64 GB of RAM, although you'll pay a premium for it.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
premium = an arm and a leg. My 7 years old Lenovo laptop mounts 64gb of RAM and 2 1TB ssds. It costed less than a Mac M1 Pro 7 years later.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  I suspect that your workload that uses 64 GB of RAM and 2 1 TB SSDs could benefit from an extremely fast processor.
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is. I could understand 20% more, but not two times. Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market. They simply will never be mainstream. My answer was to I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead I would! CPU alone doesn't sell notebooks to non-tech people on a budget
    - dagw 5y ago
      The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. But only sacrificing something else, like screen, battery life and/or build quality. I bought a M1 Pro, not primarily because of its performance, but because it was the cheapest way to get the performance I wanted without sacrificing battery life or build quality in a hardware/software package I could trust to Just Work out of the box.
      - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
        What do you sacrifice if you get e.g. an Asus ROG Strix G15 ? It is benchmarking pretty close to the M1 Pro, and you can get it for around $1800.
        dagw 5y ago
        Weight and real world battery life would be two things. Almost certainly build quality. The screen almost certainly isn't as nice. Even if the overall 'macro' bench marks are the same, it almost certainly won't beat the Macbook in day to day 'micro benchmarks' I care about like time to open a new terminal, time to run npm install, time to wake when I open the lid, time from login to watching Netflix, time to search the hard drive for file etc. etc. If I need 'real' performance I'll use a chunky Ryzen/Threadripper desktop computer running Linux over any laptop on the market. Also I just don't trust Windows laptops to go to sleep properly when I shut the lid. With both high end Dell and Lenovo laptops I've on more than one occasion pulled out a scorching hot laptop with a dead battery out of my bag. Never had a Mac do that. It may be a small thing, but I'm willing to pay a pretty decent premium to never have that happen again. Plus there's the fact that something almost certainly won't just work if I try to install a *nix based operating system on it. edit: Oh yea another big one, with the Mac I get a trackpad good enough that I don't feel the need to carry a mouse.
        O_H_E 5y ago
        > Even if the overall 'macro' bench marks are the same, it almost certainly won't beat the Macbook in day to day 'micro benchmarks' I care about like time to open a new terminal, time to run npm install, time to wake when I open the lid, time from login to watching Netflix, time to search the hard drive for file etc. etc. Yeah! I feel like I have been needing a word for that for sometime. Never had a mac, but surprisingly I have the same exact experience with my IT_managed_Dell+Windows+Antivirus vs my 6yo thinkpad with linux (even months of uptime) even plain process spawning from powershell is slow, that AV is just hell.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    Such as a high end Ryzen, which eats the M1 for breakfast ? Sure.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      The M1 chips that have been released certainly can't compete on core count against desktop chips with Zen 3 cores, but compared to the laptop versions of Ryzen, the M1 is absolutely not being eaten for breakfast. >The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
      - ohgodplsno 5y ago
        This article is one of the few anandtech articles which is just straight up wrong and/or incomplete on many points, notably only comparing to (relatively) old desktop chips. A 5900HX (released in January) scores 50% higher on multithreading on cinebench, and equal on single threaded tests like Geekbench. A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you. So, really, what this is saying is that a brand new, constructor specific 5nm SoC that is tailor made with a CPU/memory quasi-direct link is about equal to a year and a half old 7nm CPU, while being twice as expensive. As much as the Apple fanboys can scream about pOwEr EfFiCciEnCy!1, making up a $1500 difference just in electricity costs is going to be hard. Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.
        nicoburns 5y ago
        > A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you. Confused. The MacBook Pro is also available from $2500.
        simonh 5y ago
        > Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop I see you subscribe to the John Hodgman school of laptop design. https://youtu.be/gHG0cT_ck00 https://youtu.be/gHG0cT_ck00

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

I suspect you'll get downvoted into oblivion for your PoV by the pro-Apple HN crowd and even though I do agree with you to some extent on the the high pricing (a basic M1 MacBook is half my NET take home pay as a dev in Europe, and double my rent costs) but value is subjective to most people, and for most, buying into the Apple ecosystem the value the ecosystem brings to their lives is justified, otherwise they wouldn't buy it in the first place (it's not a Prada handbag). Especially for high income earners from wealthy western countries, the cost of ownership can be easily justified for the convenience it brings. But if you're not currently into the Apple ecosystem, and consider going all-in, the total costs of ownership are indeed a bit eye-watering for those without six figure jobs, if you disregard or don't need or don't care about the whole ecosystem and just look at the specs to price ratio of the laptop on it's own (I got a 13 inch QHD thin and light laptop with an 8 core Ryzen 5800U and 16GB RAM and 1TB NVME removable!!! SSD and 8 hour battery life for 750 Euros, where I can dual-boot Linux and Windows and run absolutely any (non-Apple)SW I could ever need). So, since I don't need any component of the Apple ecosystem, I can't justify spending double the money to get more limited functionality in return, though I am tech savvy enough to use Windows and Linux and create for myself a similar (and subjectively better) ecosystem to Apple's for cheap/free using various OSS and proprietary SW. However, lost of doctors I visit and most high-earners I know seem to own Macs and iPhones, so for them most likely it's worth the extra penny for the magic of the ecosystem where everything Justworks(TM) and they don't have to spend extra time learning and fiddling with tech related stuff they don't care for. And TBH, if I didn't have to worry about money, and didn't have a career and hobbies that required the need to run X86_X64 binaries and Android apps, then I'd probably go all-in on the latest Apple MacBook Pros with extra-ports plus iPhone ecosystem for the convenience and time savings.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
well, truth is Apple MacBook Air 13 with 16 GB of RAM is listed at € 1.429 on the Italian Apple web site. My sister bought a Lenovo thinkbook with a Ryzen 7, 16 GB of RAM (upgradable up to 32) for € 729 My 3D artist friend an Asus ROG 14 with an NVidia GPU and 32GB of RAM for € 1.780 and he's using it to render complex scenes. Does the increase in performance justify the ridiculous price? It doesn't, in my opinion. Also, Apple doesn't want to be a mainstream company, their market is never gonna be huge, premium prices are only justifiable if the product is somewhat exclusive.

hvgk 5y ago

A $200 smartphone isn’t enough for most people. They’ve been sold that ideology but all I see is people struggling with them constantly assuming that’s the best of the future in their hands.

GeneralMaximus 5y ago

While I've recently stopped using Macs as my primary computers, I can definitely see the appeal of Apple computers for a large segment of the population. E.g I still have my old MacBook around for running Ableton, because support for pro audio on both Windows and Linux is not great. Linux is almost there with PipeWire support landing in most major distros, but Windows still requires a lot of fiddling with drivers and random EXEs downloaded off the web to get a reasonable setup going. And I'm not even an audio professional, just a hobbyist with very mainstream hardware. I suspect a lot of media/design/film professionals are in the same boat. Not to mention software developers who want a smoother experience than Windows/Linux can give them. This has always been Apple's market and they don't care about anyone else.

brokenmachine 5y ago
God I wish Ableton would support Linux, but I don't think it'll happen.

boplicity 5y ago

> who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 years old. It was very expensive when I bought it, but the "cost per hour" has actually been quite low. The benefit of a better experience during the entire duration of usage is well worth the added cost, in my experience.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
riquito 5y ago
You're confirming OP point though, you didn't upgrade in 8 years, because for your use case it was good enough and not worth the expense
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  If they had instead bought a $700 laptop 8 years ago, they likely would have had to upgrade several times by now.
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    800 dollar laptops today are more durable than M1 with max 16 GB of RAM at double the price, because their RAM is actually upgradable most of the time. It's so funny see Mac fans argue about everything and its contrary that it's worth the obvious down votes.
    - tonguez 5y ago
      "800 dollar laptops today are more durable ... because their RAM is ... upgradable" I think the word durable has more of a connotation of being resistant to damage rather than meaning "able to be used for a long time".

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

I am not what you would call an Apple fan still I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16Gb of RAM in France for around 1200€ a couple of months ago (to replace an early 2011 Macbook Pro - I don't change my personal laptop often). While I would never buy a Macbook Pro, I think the Air pricing was fine. The price is pretty close to other ultraportables, performances are very good, battery life is incredible, the screen is beautiful and I don't mind paying a small premium for a sleek design and good quality control. I don't feel like I wasted my money.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
I'm looking at prices on the French Apple website and it says 7 cores GPU / 16GB RAM / 256GB SSD 1.359 euros https://i.imgur.com/udZSqAz.png https://i.imgur.com/udZSqAz.png 8 core GPU / 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD 1.629 euros https://i.imgur.com/QacUu2X.png https://i.imgur.com/QacUu2X.png I'm not saying it isn't the price people will pay, I'm only saying it's a price point that will convince people to upgrade, but won't allow Apple market to expand in a meaningful way. Apple had already a boom years ago, I still remember Peter Jackson editing LOTR on set with his MacBook Pro + Final cut. Then Apple stagnated and studios replaced their Macs with PCs. Now maybe they will buy Macs again, it's a cycle, it's the same market shrinking a little and expanding a little over time. Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  It's not interesting to buy these laptops straight from Apple. Large national resellers like Darty or Fnac offer better services and discount them very often. > Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives. I have a very different reading of the market. I don't think iPhones are priced competitively. They are not really better than Android phones which are far cheaper. That's why they have such a ridiculously low market share in Europe. The Macbook Air is competitively priced however. Its price is in line with the rest of the market and it is a good cost to value offered proposition.
  - dagw 5y ago

cassianoleal 5y ago

I have replaced my Core i9 with 32Gb RAM with an M1 Air with 16Gb RAM and couldn't be happier. I work as a platform engineer, code mostly in Go and Python, run VMs and containers as well as some crappy resource-hungry apps like Slack and Signal all day long, and have never felt the need for more RAM on this machine. YMMV, of course, but 16Gb on an Apple Silicon machine takes you a lot farther than you would imagine. I have co-workers who go by daily with 8Gb M1 machines.

lillecarl 5y ago
I monitor the RAM usage of my work machine with prometheus, and I haven't been above 16GB yet. This is on a machine with 40GB RAM and swappiness set to 1 (don't swap unless you reeeeeeeaaaalllyyyy have to). This is running Linux rather than macos though, but it shouldn't really matter. I do have loads of web junk loaded. (Slack, Gmail, Gcal, YT music, Fastmail, plenty of browser tabs)

markphip 5y ago

These are pure guesses on my part, but I would guess that 99% of laptops that are sold each year are purchased with 16GB or less RAM and 99% of laptops that have been sold all time have never had their RAM upgraded. So I would also guess the number of people willing to buy one of these is pretty high. I purchased the MacBook Air and love it. So fast, so quiet. Could I afford it? Yes. But I also typically use a Mac for 5-7 years so I did not consider it overly expensive.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Not this year, I've seen lots of laptops coming out starting at 32GB at reasonable prices, pretty sure your 99% is more like 80-90%

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Most people spend a lot of time on the computer. I can't imagine working around a half screen of data and halfscreen of a keyboard. Make a proper wireless docking station and give me a keyboard and mouse and monitor and then we'll talk. After about half hour staring at a phone screen I'm ready to throw it through a window from the eye strain. I think laptops/desktops will be with us for a while longer.

sharikous 5y ago

not sure what's your point.. A wholeful lot of working people need a computer, a phone is not enough. A laptop that has top notch battery performance and can handle heavy work at the same time, being also very lightweight, has a lot of pluses. The fact that it is well built and that it is battery efficient is, that alone, sort of an insurance policy. I can see many occasions arising in a timespan of some years where a professional could lose a lot of money if its main work device proves to be unreliable at a wrong moment. It might be more than those 1500 euros depending on the field.

kaba0 5y ago

Are there any other laptop currently on the market with similar performance and battery life? It’s not like M1s are the exact same as the models before.