8 ms·

The hardware looks nice but it's not for normal people getting normal work done. Things have gotten marginally better since Ive left, but they still have a long

by gentle 4y ago

The hardware looks nice but it's not for normal people getting normal work done. Things have gotten marginally better since Ive left, but they still have a long way to go.

zer01 4y ago
I disagree, having migrated multiple family members away from shitty plastic laptops full of bloat ware and ads and shitty Android phones full of the same they are much more able to use their devices. I also find as a dev that iPhones and MacBooks “just work” and let me get my stuff done, much much more so than a Linux desktop environment or windows laptop. I guess we may be talking about different things though if you’re saying the apple ecosystem isn’t living up to its full potential, but IMO the rest of the phone/computer ecosystem is full of cheap shitty plastic crap with windows installs that OEMs have had free reign to install whatever they want on (and even without that, why tf when I install windows 10 do I get ads for “candy crush” on my start menu?!)
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Comparing Apple's hardware to shitty plastic laptops is a false equivalence though. Once you spend Apple money on hardware, you get much better stuff in return. Apple is perceived to be high quality because they only serve the high end. When you compare ecosystems, you should at least compare the same market segment. There are also market segments that Apple has no products in (convertibles, for examples, or sub 600 dollar laptops). Candy crush hasn't been installed by default for years now. There's plenty wrong with Windows 11, but the spam has severely reduced and the user experience has improved in many points (and made worse in others, i.e. not being able to dock the task bar to the side, though you can't do that on macOS either).
  - donarb 4y ago
    > not being able to dock the task bar to the side, though you can't do that on macOS either In System Preferences > General you can set the dock to the left, right or bottom of the screen.
  - AnthonBerg 4y ago
    I have honestly, earnestly tried. I have tried to find a laptop that is for my needs and purposes truly equivalent to an Apple Macbook Pro. Or better. I always end up going with an Apple machine. There has always been a significant part of the assembly that just isn’t as good. It’s often disk speed or display quality. Build quality too. I want to underline that this is true for what I need out of a laptop. The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough).
    - JimmyAustin 4y ago
      Depending on your workload, the Mac Studio would be the replacement for a 3900X box. It's not a GPU powerhouse, and lacks expandability though.
      - AnthonBerg 4y ago
        That’s exactly it :)
    - microtonal 4y ago
      The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough). My MacBook Pro 14" is pretty much on-par with my Ryzen 5900X CPU-wise (the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin). The GPU of the M1 Max is nothing to sneeze at, but I'd love it if they'd bring eGPU support to the M1 line. (And if one can dream, if NVIDIA would also make CUDA available.)
      - floatboth 4y ago
        > the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin Well, in which tasks? Comparing e.g. geekbench results for the M1 Ultra https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 and a decent 5950X (PBO) result https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 it looks like a lot of Apple's multicore score is attributable to AES (which uses special fixed-function HW). And with other tests, different CPUs win different benchmarks. 5950X notably wins in clang :) > bring eGPU support to the M1 line Probably not M1. marcan tweeted recently that Apple's PCIe integration has been is broken in the same way as on Broadcom's RPi4 SoC — mapping PCIe BARs as normal memory (which allows unaligned access) doesn't work. I can't find the tweet (deleted??) but here's the RPi thread: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/4 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... Basically there's no quick kernel level workaround for this, if you really want a GPU to work on such a broken platform you need to patch every single thing in userspace to avoid unaligned access. We'll see soon if that's fixed in M2, but I suspect they don't care…
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end”, yet they are unmatched for the tasks that 80% of people require from their laptops. And it has been this way for 10 years.
    - toast0 4y ago
      > I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end” They aren't high end, but if we're comparing to other laptops, $1000 is far from entry level. Entry level is $200-250, and mid-level, probably good machines tend to start around $500; for $1000, you usually get either good specs or nice aesthetics and sometimes both. Of course, for some users, the $250 laptop has more than enough computing power for their needs (as long as it has a half-decent SSD, cause windows 10, and I assume 11 can't stop thrashing a spinning drive and there goes your perceived performance; I've never dug into it like in this article though, swapping in an SSD is good enough)
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I have never seen a laptop for sale for $250. I have probably seen laptops for sale for $500, years ago. Which I assume came with malware, a 30min battery, and the worst quality components that lead to significant odds of failure within a few years. There is somewhat of a correlation between price and quality of product. After a certain price, any lower, and you start getting into the “it’s more expensive to be poor” scenarios, where the amortized cost the product over its lifetime ends up higher than the ones that cost more upfront. I still remember the standard advice of buying a Windows consumer laptop was to reinstall the OS after buying it. In what world should that be acceptable? In my accounting, that time and effort spent installing an OS gets added to the price.
        progman32 4y ago
        Several options for sale under 250 usd. Barely usable, but entry level for sure. Dell https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-silver-dell-latitude-e6530-mainstream/p/1TS-000A-0MPJ6 https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-silver-dell-latitude-e6530-m... Lenovo https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-01931 https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-01931 Hp https://www.newegg.com/black-hp-stream-pro-11-g5-everyday-value/p/1TS-000D-0SUU5 https://www.newegg.com/black-hp-stream-pro-11-g5-everyday-va... Under 200 https://www.newegg.com/black-evoo-ultra-thin/p/1TS-00AY-000D2 https://www.newegg.com/black-evoo-ultra-thin/p/1TS-00AY-000D...
  - bgoggin 4y ago
    You can move the dock to the side on MacOS and this has existed for years.
- sschueller 4y ago
  If you spend apple prices on PC hardware you will get more performance and a lot less plastic crap.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    I think you mean a lot more plastic crap, right? For a PC laptop of the same price (eg Lenovo X1), I find that they are a lot more flimsy than a aluminum unibody construction. In fact, I mostly moved to Apple to get away from plastic. If I’m wrong and you have specific examples, let me know. But the last time I checked, PC quality price per price was still pretty bad compared to Apple.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      A Lenovo X1 can handle spills unlike an Apple laptop. That's what build quality is about.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    This has been debunked time and time again over the years; when you spec out something truly similar, the price is more or less the same.
    - lynndotpy 4y ago
      Wait, what? I think I'm missing something because the price difference is still there. This argument is old as the hills but has generally held up. The 2020 MBA (to avoid having arguments comparing ARM and x64 cpus) launched at $1000 started at a 256GB disk, 1.1GHz two-core i3, and 8GB of RAM. A quick search will find the 2020 Acer Swift 3, $700, with a 512GB disk, 1.8GHz eight-core Ryzen 7, and 8GB of RAM. It looks pretty sleek, metal, and thin too. I do mean this sincerely, am I missing something? Because I don't know of any perspective where the price-spec gap disappears with Apple laptops. When people talk about buying Apple "for the hardware", I really don't think the argument is about the specs.
      - 4y ago

by gentle 4y ago

The hardware looks nice but it's not for normal people getting normal work done. Things have gotten marginally better since Ive left, but they still have a long way to go.

zer01 4y ago

I disagree, having migrated multiple family members away from shitty plastic laptops full of bloat ware and ads and shitty Android phones full of the same they are much more able to use their devices. I also find as a dev that iPhones and MacBooks “just work” and let me get my stuff done, much much more so than a Linux desktop environment or windows laptop. I guess we may be talking about different things though if you’re saying the apple ecosystem isn’t living up to its full potential, but IMO the rest of the phone/computer ecosystem is full of cheap shitty plastic crap with windows installs that OEMs have had free reign to install whatever they want on (and even without that, why tf when I install windows 10 do I get ads for “candy crush” on my start menu?!)

jeroenhd 4y ago
Comparing Apple's hardware to shitty plastic laptops is a false equivalence though. Once you spend Apple money on hardware, you get much better stuff in return. Apple is perceived to be high quality because they only serve the high end. When you compare ecosystems, you should at least compare the same market segment. There are also market segments that Apple has no products in (convertibles, for examples, or sub 600 dollar laptops). Candy crush hasn't been installed by default for years now. There's plenty wrong with Windows 11, but the spam has severely reduced and the user experience has improved in many points (and made worse in others, i.e. not being able to dock the task bar to the side, though you can't do that on macOS either).
- donarb 4y ago
  > not being able to dock the task bar to the side, though you can't do that on macOS either In System Preferences > General you can set the dock to the left, right or bottom of the screen.
- AnthonBerg 4y ago
  I have honestly, earnestly tried. I have tried to find a laptop that is for my needs and purposes truly equivalent to an Apple Macbook Pro. Or better. I always end up going with an Apple machine. There has always been a significant part of the assembly that just isn’t as good. It’s often disk speed or display quality. Build quality too. I want to underline that this is true for what I need out of a laptop. The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough).
  - JimmyAustin 4y ago
    Depending on your workload, the Mac Studio would be the replacement for a 3900X box. It's not a GPU powerhouse, and lacks expandability though.
    - AnthonBerg 4y ago
      That’s exactly it :)
  - microtonal 4y ago
    The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough). My MacBook Pro 14" is pretty much on-par with my Ryzen 5900X CPU-wise (the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin). The GPU of the M1 Max is nothing to sneeze at, but I'd love it if they'd bring eGPU support to the M1 line. (And if one can dream, if NVIDIA would also make CUDA available.)
    - floatboth 4y ago
      > the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin Well, in which tasks? Comparing e.g. geekbench results for the M1 Ultra https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 and a decent 5950X (PBO) result https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 it looks like a lot of Apple's multicore score is attributable to AES (which uses special fixed-function HW). And with other tests, different CPUs win different benchmarks. 5950X notably wins in clang :) > bring eGPU support to the M1 line Probably not M1. marcan tweeted recently that Apple's PCIe integration has been is broken in the same way as on Broadcom's RPi4 SoC — mapping PCIe BARs as normal memory (which allows unaligned access) doesn't work. I can't find the tweet (deleted??) but here's the RPi thread: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/4 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... Basically there's no quick kernel level workaround for this, if you really want a GPU to work on such a broken platform you need to patch every single thing in userspace to avoid unaligned access. We'll see soon if that's fixed in M2, but I suspect they don't care…
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end”, yet they are unmatched for the tasks that 80% of people require from their laptops. And it has been this way for 10 years.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end” They aren't high end, but if we're comparing to other laptops, $1000 is far from entry level. Entry level is $200-250, and mid-level, probably good machines tend to start around $500; for $1000, you usually get either good specs or nice aesthetics and sometimes both. Of course, for some users, the $250 laptop has more than enough computing power for their needs (as long as it has a half-decent SSD, cause windows 10, and I assume 11 can't stop thrashing a spinning drive and there goes your perceived performance; I've never dug into it like in this article though, swapping in an SSD is good enough)
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I have never seen a laptop for sale for $250. I have probably seen laptops for sale for $500, years ago. Which I assume came with malware, a 30min battery, and the worst quality components that lead to significant odds of failure within a few years. There is somewhat of a correlation between price and quality of product. After a certain price, any lower, and you start getting into the “it’s more expensive to be poor” scenarios, where the amortized cost the product over its lifetime ends up higher than the ones that cost more upfront. I still remember the standard advice of buying a Windows consumer laptop was to reinstall the OS after buying it. In what world should that be acceptable? In my accounting, that time and effort spent installing an OS gets added to the price.
      - progman32 4y ago
        Several options for sale under 250 usd. Barely usable, but entry level for sure. Dell https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-silver-dell-latitude-e6530-mainstream/p/1TS-000A-0MPJ6 https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-silver-dell-latitude-e6530-m... Lenovo https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-01931 https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-01931 Hp https://www.newegg.com/black-hp-stream-pro-11-g5-everyday-value/p/1TS-000D-0SUU5 https://www.newegg.com/black-hp-stream-pro-11-g5-everyday-va... Under 200 https://www.newegg.com/black-evoo-ultra-thin/p/1TS-00AY-000D2 https://www.newegg.com/black-evoo-ultra-thin/p/1TS-00AY-000D...
- bgoggin 4y ago
  You can move the dock to the side on MacOS and this has existed for years.
sschueller 4y ago
If you spend apple prices on PC hardware you will get more performance and a lot less plastic crap.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I think you mean a lot more plastic crap, right? For a PC laptop of the same price (eg Lenovo X1), I find that they are a lot more flimsy than a aluminum unibody construction. In fact, I mostly moved to Apple to get away from plastic. If I’m wrong and you have specific examples, let me know. But the last time I checked, PC quality price per price was still pretty bad compared to Apple.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    A Lenovo X1 can handle spills unlike an Apple laptop. That's what build quality is about.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  This has been debunked time and time again over the years; when you spec out something truly similar, the price is more or less the same.
  - lynndotpy 4y ago
    Wait, what? I think I'm missing something because the price difference is still there. This argument is old as the hills but has generally held up. The 2020 MBA (to avoid having arguments comparing ARM and x64 cpus) launched at $1000 started at a 256GB disk, 1.1GHz two-core i3, and 8GB of RAM. A quick search will find the 2020 Acer Swift 3, $700, with a 512GB disk, 1.8GHz eight-core Ryzen 7, and 8GB of RAM. It looks pretty sleek, metal, and thin too. I do mean this sincerely, am I missing something? Because I don't know of any perspective where the price-spec gap disappears with Apple laptops. When people talk about buying Apple "for the hardware", I really don't think the argument is about the specs.
    - 4y ago