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Because they have a week where they can control the narrative before the press gets their hands on actual devices. Every news site on the planet wants to write

Because they have a week where they can control the narrative before the press gets their hands on actual devices. Every news site on the planet wants to write about the new Apple stuff, and since there are no 3rd party benchmarks yet, they have to parrot Apple's claims. A week later, most of the press has already forgotten about Apple's new stuff already, and noone cares about the actual benchmarks. Except us techies, who didn't believe Apple's claims in the first place. To be honest I'm much more disappointed that they shipped yet another crappy webcam in the Studio display after claiming it's the best webcam ever. (The webcams in all the M1 Macs suck ass, despite what Apple and the early press reviews claim)

zamalek 5y ago
> Except us techies, who didn't believe Apple's claims in the first place. That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. The other side of this is that people have been exclusively using Apple products for so long, that they don't have the experience to compare what Apple is doing with the rest of the industry. Apple only has to outdo themselves.
- eertami 5y ago
  >That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. This isn't an accident, it happens due to Apple's pricing/marketing strategy. If you can convince people to pay a premium for your product (when compared to competitors), people psychologically _need_ that product to be better than the cheaper alternatives, or else they feel ripped off. Best to ignore anecdotes from customers and instead rely only on hard benchmarks/data and make purchasing decisions based on what is most suited to you.
  - stouset 5y ago
    Apple products have been competitively priced against similar-performing hardware for years. The so-called "Apple tax" is a myth.
    - sitzkrieg 5y ago
      uhhh in what alternative reality is this true?
      - mwint 5y ago
        The one that started roughly the time M1 started shipping in a laptop with good build quality and decent keyboard.
        stouset 5y ago
        Honestly well before then. Phones—Apple's largest product by far—have been competitively priced their entire lifespan. One might even argue based on performance numbers and battery lifespan that they've been by far the best deal. As far as I understand it, their laptops have also been within a pretty reasonable margin of being competitively priced (at least for base models) for many years. Sure you can find cheaper alternatives, but those usually come with significant sacrifices (build quality, missing features or lower-quality versions of those features), etc. Obviously different people can vary widely in how much they value feature sets, but competitors' laptop models that line up closely in those feature sets have tended to be around the same price for awhile now.
      - evilduck 5y ago
        In most realities. If you list all dimensions of Apple's computing products as a radar chart and as a consumer that chart "shape" meets your needs, you will not find a competitor that meets those same needs on all of those dimensions but is also meaningfully cheaper. You can find comparable devices that are comparatively priced, and you can find cheaper devices that come with a slew of compromises, but Apple is incredibly hard to beat at their own game.
        newaccount74 5y ago
        That's kind of a weird way to look at it. It assumes that your needs match exactly what Apple offers, which is rarely the case. For most users, Apple devices come with their own set of compromises. Instead of taking Apple's devices as the benchmark, and trying to find a device that's cheaper and better on all axes, you have to start with the users requirements, and see where you get from there. For example, if your requirement is "I want a silent machine for programming with lots of RAM for running VMs" then it's very unlikely that the cheapest option is going to be a Mac. If your requirement is "I want a machine for checking my emails and watching Netflix with a big screen" then it's also very unlikely that the cheapest option is a Mac. The only scenario where a Mac is reasonably priced is if your requirement is "I want a machine that is exactly like one of the few machines that Apple sells and I don't mind its shortcomings".
mschuster91 5y ago
> The webcams in all the M1 Macs suck ass, despite what Apple and the early press reviews claim I have yet to see any computer ship with a half-decent camera to be fair, neither in the Windows nor in the Apple world. People want thin screens, about half as thin as your average phone. There's simply no physical space to fit good optics in there - there's a reason why external high quality webcams are so large!

zamalek 5y ago

> Except us techies, who didn't believe Apple's claims in the first place. That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. The other side of this is that people have been exclusively using Apple products for so long, that they don't have the experience to compare what Apple is doing with the rest of the industry. Apple only has to outdo themselves.

eertami 5y ago
>That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. This isn't an accident, it happens due to Apple's pricing/marketing strategy. If you can convince people to pay a premium for your product (when compared to competitors), people psychologically _need_ that product to be better than the cheaper alternatives, or else they feel ripped off. Best to ignore anecdotes from customers and instead rely only on hard benchmarks/data and make purchasing decisions based on what is most suited to you.
- stouset 5y ago
  Apple products have been competitively priced against similar-performing hardware for years. The so-called "Apple tax" is a myth.
  - sitzkrieg 5y ago
    uhhh in what alternative reality is this true?
    - mwint 5y ago
      The one that started roughly the time M1 started shipping in a laptop with good build quality and decent keyboard.
      - stouset 5y ago
        Honestly well before then. Phones—Apple's largest product by far—have been competitively priced their entire lifespan. One might even argue based on performance numbers and battery lifespan that they've been by far the best deal. As far as I understand it, their laptops have also been within a pretty reasonable margin of being competitively priced (at least for base models) for many years. Sure you can find cheaper alternatives, but those usually come with significant sacrifices (build quality, missing features or lower-quality versions of those features), etc. Obviously different people can vary widely in how much they value feature sets, but competitors' laptop models that line up closely in those feature sets have tended to be around the same price for awhile now.
    - evilduck 5y ago
      In most realities. If you list all dimensions of Apple's computing products as a radar chart and as a consumer that chart "shape" meets your needs, you will not find a competitor that meets those same needs on all of those dimensions but is also meaningfully cheaper. You can find comparable devices that are comparatively priced, and you can find cheaper devices that come with a slew of compromises, but Apple is incredibly hard to beat at their own game.
      - newaccount74 5y ago
        That's kind of a weird way to look at it. It assumes that your needs match exactly what Apple offers, which is rarely the case. For most users, Apple devices come with their own set of compromises. Instead of taking Apple's devices as the benchmark, and trying to find a device that's cheaper and better on all axes, you have to start with the users requirements, and see where you get from there. For example, if your requirement is "I want a silent machine for programming with lots of RAM for running VMs" then it's very unlikely that the cheapest option is going to be a Mac. If your requirement is "I want a machine for checking my emails and watching Netflix with a big screen" then it's also very unlikely that the cheapest option is a Mac. The only scenario where a Mac is reasonably priced is if your requirement is "I want a machine that is exactly like one of the few machines that Apple sells and I don't mind its shortcomings".

mschuster91 5y ago

> The webcams in all the M1 Macs suck ass, despite what Apple and the early press reviews claim I have yet to see any computer ship with a half-decent camera to be fair, neither in the Windows nor in the Apple world. People want thin screens, about half as thin as your average phone. There's simply no physical space to fit good optics in there - there's a reason why external high quality webcams are so large!