11 ms·

Apple Silicon is an inconvenient truth

103 points by alehlopeh 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago
Gruber is smoking something. Comparing Apple to PC laptops has never been common in these "best laptop" articles.
- fredgrott 4y ago
  He is not smoking something but remembering a time of Apple just right after Jobs left the first time when after macs got expansion slots they started comparing macs to PCs. Yes, old enough to remember that and expanding Performa macs for more performance.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  To be fair, the original author of the quoted article is probably doing most of the smoking of things. All Gruber did is restate it and add the obnoxious political snipe at the end. Windows people, how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be before you'd start to consider using something other than Windows? I know if the question were flipped and given to me as a Mac user, the answer would have to be something like "fast enough that the muscle memory and system knowledge I've gained from three decades of Mac use could be overcome by sheer system speed of the Windows machine," and that would have to be pretty damned fast. Given that it's pretty irrelevant to me to compare the two.
  - bnj 4y ago
    If the reason it doesn’t make sense to include the (faster, more power efficient) MacBooks in reviews is that windows users would have to see way higher value before they’d even consider switching… then shouldn’t that just be stated in the review? That the purpose of the review is to compare x86 laptops? If a review is looking at hardware, and MacBooks are out there, shouldn’t they be included for the benefit of people who are actually trying to understand their purchase options?
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      Let me try restating my point: Windows users know how to be productive in Windows. How many of these people will be willing to give up that knowledge for a Mac that may be faster in terms of brute speed but with which they will, at least initially, have no idea how to be productive with? Sit a person who's only ever used Windows their whole life in front of a Mac and ask them to find and launch a certain application. Once they realize there's no Start button they'll probably be completely lost.
      - bnj 4y ago
        Thanks, that’s helpful- and I agree with you that the time and energy required to learn a new OS is a big investment for users who are comfortable with what they have. But, it sounds like you and I land on two different sides of this. Your point seems to be that other OS machines shouldn’t be included because of that significant entry barrier, and my point is that if the review is being presented as a comparison of the best hardware options, then it’s not accurate to eliminate MacOS machines on the basis of software. I’d sooner see reviews either (a) compare exclusively same-OS machines and say so, or (b) disclaim that users might face that bigger entry barrier, but show the comparison and leave the decision of whether learning a new OS would be worth it to the reader
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    I would rather use a Linux machine but I have generally been using Windows due to the general lack of support for Linux. There are a variety of things Windows and Apple simply don't support, and the list of things Apple doesn't support is longer. There are some old games I enjoy playing with friend and they simply don't run on a Mac, for example. So it doesn't matter how fast the Mac is, I can't alt-tab over to the game then alt-tab back to my terminal and do something real quick, I need an entirely separate Apple machine if I want the terminal to be "fast." Speed is just not that useful to me, I want a general-purpose computer and it's fine if some features perform at 1/5th the speed, the computer is mostly idle anyway and while instant is obviously better versatility is the primary virtue I'm looking for.
  - JohnDeHope 4y ago
    > how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be Until Macs run games, it's a pointless comparison. If Steam did for Macs what they did for Linux, then we'd have something interesting to talk about. But a PC without games is about as attractive as... a Ferrari, I guess. If somebody handed me a free 200K$ sports car, I'd just sell it. It's useless for my lifestyle. A PC that can't play games is equally useless to me.
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      Steam exists on Mac, and while there are plenty of games that don't have Mac ports that I wish I could play (Stray being the most recent), there are still enough to keep me perpetually backlogged, and the limits are probably best for my wallet and productivity anyway.
      - 7speter 4y ago
        Steam exists on the mac and steam exists on linux. The need for linux ports is dwindling now that Steam has developed proton, a sort of rosetta that converts directx api calls into vulkan api calls, on linux
      - smaccona 4y ago
        Steam exists on macOS, but honestly it feels like a second class citizen to me. Lots of the games that used to work fine no longer work because they are 32-bit and are no longer supported on current macOS releases, which only support 64-bit binaries. We can argue back and forth all day about whether this is Apple’s fault or the developers’ fault, but a key giveaway to me is that Portal and Portal 2, which are (arguably at least) flagship games for Valve, have not have 64-but releases. I get that it’s not as simple as a recompile & release, but to my mind it’s a bit of a giveaway that macOS doesn’t seem to have enough gaming market share to force a re-release on 64-bit for all these games.
        Cyberdog 4y ago
        As a huge fan of the Portal games, I feel your pain. I really miss them. Unfortunately Valve doesn't really seem to be in the market of making actual games anymore, so we'll probably never see a 64-bit upgrade. But like I said, I've still got other games to play. I've long ago made peace with the idea that I just can't play every game I want to play at any time on my Mac, and that's fine. Others will have a different opinion and that's fine too.
- ksec 4y ago
  Exactly. It is rare, not the norm. But Gruber rarely goes outside of Apple circle so he doesn't know any of these. I cant count how many times he got things factually wrong. ( And rarely correct himself ) I mean when certain things on PC were actually better, did Gruber ever mentions it as an inconvenient truth? Those rare reviews included MacBook when it could run Bootcamp ( Windows ). From a comparative point of view at least that make sense. Buyer aren't looking for Hardware differences, if nerds want to pinpoint that with GB5 they would have known. And it is not like these site completely ignore Apple products either. They are just done in a separate article.
  - danaris 4y ago
    > I mean when certain things on PC were actually better, did Gruber ever mentions it as an inconvenient truth? ...Why would he? There are hundreds of tech publications and bloggers who will cheerfully talk about why Windows computers are better than Macs, and have been basically since the release of Windows 1.0. He's calling this "an inconvenient truth" because he's seeing a trend among supposedly cross-platform reviews that say the Apple Silicon-based computers are faster than any of the Intel computers being reviewed......and then just say "but the Intel one is the best!" without justifying that with any explanation about how obviously anyone who's looking to do real work needs a Windows computer or something.
- runjake 4y ago
  Except MacBooks and PC laptops are being compared in the linked Ars article: "They're going head to head with Apple's MacBook Pros—at the event announcing the systems, Microsoft even made this comparison explicitly." Edit: Here's various tech outfits directly comparing Apple MacBooks to traditional PCs for "best laptop: The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/21250695/best-laptops https://www.theverge.com/21250695/best-laptops CNET: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptop/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptop/ PCMAG: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-laptops https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-laptops Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/best-laptops-120008636.html https://www.engadget.com/best-laptops-120008636.html
russellbeattie 4y ago
Aww! I love these threads! 40 years or so of Apple and PC fanboys going at it. That's at least three generations of geeks! It's comforting like a bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese or hot cocoa on a cold day. It's nice! It reminds of days long past when I actually gave a fuck. :-)
smoldesu 4y ago
I mean, here's an inconvenient truth: the software I use on a daily basis doesn't work on ARM. The software I develop at work doesn't run on ARM. If there was a laptop that could replace my T460s with 20 hours of battery life, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, an x86 laptop with 4 hours of battery life is always going to be more productive than an ARM Macbook/Raspberry Pi for my purposes. I don't think that's denial, it's just the transactional cost of Apple continuing to cut people out of their ecosystem. That's a perfectly fine decision for them to make, but if you can't argue that Apple Silicon will work for everybody, you're defending a moot point. They could make a laptop with 100 hours of battery life, but if it can't run my Docker containers for work, then it can't replace what I have already.
- brundolf 4y ago
  > but if it can't run my Docker containers for work I don't understand; Docker Desktop for Apple Silicon runs x86 containers out of the box
  - saxonww 4y ago
    At slower speeds, enough that depending on what you're doing, it's not usable. And it's not guaranteed to work anyway. We had some processes which I guess were compiled to use instructions that qemu wasn't emulating, so they would crash with illegal instruction errors. Another annoyance is that your package repo may not actually publish arm versions of packages you use. This is usually the case for older stuff, e.g. MySQL 5.x was not released for arm and won't compile without backports. So, to fix the performance issues with emulation you may need to build some things yourself. Not a big deal, but also not an out of the box experience.
- spindle 4y ago
  And for many of us the software we use can run on ARM but it's extra work to make it run and that has to be factored in.
- neonsunset 4y ago
  You have never used an arm64 MacBook. Otherwise, you would know that almost all compatibility issues have been solved long time ago.
charlie0 4y ago
I'm sure reviewers' "advertising partners" are none too happy to have another machine outperform their x86 machines so badly as to tacitly imply that no one should buy them. The reviewers need to pay their bills. It's no surprise they are going to take the Macbooks out of the comparison sheets even though, for all intents and purposes, they so the same thing as Windows laptops. There are way more of them than there are ARM laptops. And yeah, I get it that in this crowd, there are many people that that need x86. But for the vast majority of consumers, all they need is a machine that can surf the web and open up spreadsheets.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > But for the vast majority of consumers, all they need is a machine that can surf the web and open up spreadsheets. Okay, so why should they buy a $1,200 base model Macbook Air instead of a $200 Lenovo Chromebook? Better yet, why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients?
  - haswell 4y ago
    > why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients? 1. Take out the “vast majority of consumers”, and there’s still a large enough market for both devices. 2. “All they need” and “all they want” are two different things. 3. Apple is in a business to make money, and people are willing to pay.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > Better yet, why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients? Well, they are. Remember apple's "what's a computer?" ads last year? And the higher end ipads cost more than the lowest priced macs. They make different products for different use cases. Personally I do development on an macbook air, which is already so light I sometimes have to check my bag to make sure I haven't forgotten it.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Because have you every actually used one of those cheap ass computers. They're absolute trash, the keyboard is wiggly, the trackpad feels awful, the screen is low res and can't handle sunlight, the wifi chip is cheap and unreliable, the speakers sound awful, the battery life is abysmal, you get no support, and it's frustratingly slow. I wouldn't wish anything you can buy at Bestbuy on my worst enemy. If anything someone who is going to be using a laptop a lot but has modest actual computing needs is the perfect candidate for a laptop that prioritizes build quality. Look, Apple isn't the only game in town when it comes to nice laptops, the Surface Book is really nice, but when you're comparing "computers I actually want to use for any extended period of time" $1200 isn't all that expensive.
neonsunset 4y ago
While I don't like the phrasing in the article, I think the author is right that it is hypocritical of reviewers to exclude MacBooks from comparison. Especially for professional work as a dev, nothing ever comes close to the value proposition of the base MBP 14" model.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > nothing ever comes close to the value proposition of the base MBP 14" model. Really? I bet you can buy a laptop for 1/10th the price that can do 90% of the same software dev tasks. The only thing the 14" does better is iOS development, which you don't have a choice of machines for anyways. I love a lot of things about the 14" Macbook Pro, but defending it's value proposition is something I can't really understand. It's a $2,000 laptop running the same OS as a $900 laptop, running the same git binary that you execute on a $35 Raspberry Pi. I don't see it.
  - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
    But how does that $900 PC hold up over time compared to a Mac? In my personal experience, I get about 2-3 years out of a PC, and about 5 out of a Mac, which justifies the price tag for me.
    - arvinsim 4y ago
      That is only if you are ok sticking with the same specs on your machine for 5 years and risk using a machine outside of its warranty period. Personally, I would rather sell my machine just before the warranty runs out(about 3 years) and buy a new one.
      - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
        > risk using a machine outside of its warranty period. For a Mac, I'm pretty comfortable using the machine outside of its warranty period compared to a PC.
greenthrow 4y ago
Gruber isn't always right, but he's right here. I use Macs and Thinkpads for work. My M1 Mac is by far the fastest and also has by far the best battery life and uses the fans the least often. x86 is way behind ARM right now.
- organsnyder 4y ago
  I have a 14" M1 MBP from work. I've never purchased a Mac for personal use, but that's going to change when I can justify replacing my Thinkpad. They made an impressive machine while also taking away all of my hangups with the hardware (keyboard, ports, touchbar).
  - RileyJames 4y ago
    Feel exactly the same. I have an M1 16” MBP from work. At first it felt way too big, now I love it. My personal machine is an XPS 13” on ubuntu, which is old now, and feels old (slow). But it’s the touchpad, screen, keyboard and battery that make it so hard to swap between.
  - Halan 4y ago
    I have the 16inch and I have never heard it’s fan. Not even while doing some intense multitasking in a room at 30 degrees Celsius. If they had told me this was possible two years ago I would have laughed
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I recently started a project with a client that shipped me a laptop. It's one of the new MBP's with an M1 Pro. Even with all the crapware this client loves to pile on these machines (standard enterprise MDM fare), this is still by far the fastest computer I've used. The fact that this thing is noticeably faster than my "main" work machine which has the same amount of ram, zero company crapware (oh how i love working for small and med sized corps) but an i7. The i7 machine is fast, chews through anything that I throw at it, but the M1 Pro is just faster, like noticeably faster all-around, not just under certain workloads. I've thrown around the idea of dropping big money ($4.8k the way I specced it) on a Mac Studio with an M1 Max. Up until now the idea was silly considering I have a perfectly good Macbook Pro from work without any spyware that I get for free. But dammit this M1 loaner might have pushed me over the edge.
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
There's a commercial bias at play with pretty much all review content, print or otherwise. I've been griping about this for years now. The major outlets and Youtubers all have relationships with various vendors in order to get early access to products so their reviews can coincide with the product launch. This creates an inherent conflict of interest that has to shape their reviews in some form or another. The problem is that there's no transparency at all. They're talking with company reps before a product launches and signing embargo agreements to not release content early. I'm not saying that every piece of review content is low quality shill clickbait BS, but the reviewer has a relationship with a company and there's no way that doesn't influence their work given that early access is important for staying relevant in the space.
- dmix 4y ago
  I see this sort of complaint like RedLetterMedia making fun of Nerd podcasts [1] by satirizing how they are given gift bags, white glove early screenings, and emails with (marketing) executives but if you look at YouTube or most media there’s plenty of critique of superhero/‘capeshit’ movies. We’re not all being forced to watch cable tv and read the same two local newspapers anymore. Some people like lowest common denominator McDonalds-type corporate content. I don’t see that changing in the future (ie, some future where these people are better informed). But maybe I’m just cynical. [1] https://youtu.be/UCIYCaXNe88 https://youtu.be/UCIYCaXNe88
  - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
    Yeah, but you're not seeing the conversations going on behind the scenes. This[0] is a great video that dives into how tablet manufacturers manipulate artists into shilling for their products. This kind of behavior is much more commonplace among tech review culture than people want to acknowledge (i.e. companies signing off on review videos before their posted, giving out free samples in exchange for positive reviews, etc.) Ultimately, the goal of advertising now is to generate advertising content that doesn't look like advertising. Review videos are an incredible vehicle to accomplish this. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH1WEYF8rlA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH1WEYF8rlA
user249 4y ago
Mac enthusiasts just can't accept the fact that people prefer to buy Windows machines over Macs by a wide margin. I used to be one of them, but the closed hardware approach and the "we know best" attitude turned me off long ago. That said, if I needed a super fast machine to do graphics or video, I'd look seriously at the new chips. I don't need such a machine.
- dingleberry420 4y ago
  If you needed such a machine you should buy a desktop with intel cpu and nvidia gpu. it'll cost less than a macbook and run circles around it
  - user249 4y ago
    Thanks. I've got a Mac enthusiast friend who says otherwise, but he's such a Mac fanatic (and a Gruber fan) that I don't trust his judgement
- wyuenho 4y ago
  Most people prefer to buy Wintel not because of religious or philosophical reasons of "closed" vs "open". Most people buy Wintel for the simple fact that most of the world aren't rich western countries, when they need computing devices, they buy the cheaper ones, which are Wintel. For "computer enthusiasts", all they care about is games. If macOS could play the full Steam catalog, they would all flock to the Mac.
  - user249 4y ago
    Yes, I forgot about price. The premium paid for Apple products isn't worth it to me
ModernMech 4y ago
Personally I have both a surface studio laptop and a MBP. I find myself using the surface much more due to the touchscreen and pen input. It’s plenty fast and has great battery that lasts all day. Sure the MBP is really fast, but I mean, so what? So is the Surface. If I need to sign something on the MBP I still have to pull out an iPad, and I guess that’s the way Apple wants it.
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  This is what kills me about Apple right now. I want MacOS on the iPad so badly and I know I'm not the only one. They've kinda painted themselves into a corner as the iPads now run basically the same silicon as the MacBooks with such a stripped down OS. Having the option to run MacOS on the iPad would be incredible, but it would also likely cannibalize their market.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > Having the option to run MacOS on the iPad would be incredible, but it would also likely cannibalize their market. I don't see it -- an ipad pro costs about the same amount or more than a macbook air. Seems like they could easily get a similar margin on either device. > I want MacOS on the iPad so badly and I know I'm not the only one. I've never understood this. I'd be curious if you could give me some perspective. I do know a lot of people would like it, so it's likely I'm just not seeing what they do. I do like some convergence between the two platforms (similar functionality / "pick up either device and continue where you left off" on a lot of apps from messaging to 3P apps like OmniFocus) but I often switch from the ipad to the mac because of the power of the keyboard and the interface metaphors. Microsoft has tried to jam the two together without (in IMHO) success as they have different affordances. Keyboard on an ipad is meh -- my macbook air is lighter than an ipad + magic keyboard. I use my ipad a lot, both standalone for reading and as a pen accessory for my mac (Apple needs to do more work on this use case). I see lots of good, remaining opportunities for overlap but wouldn't want the OS of one on the hardware of the either.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I’m an Apple fan and let me roll my eyes. This is nonsense. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Apple’s latest laptops have thoroughly wiped the floor against PCs. If that’s the case, Apple’s computers are in a completely different class. You now have ARM machines that run macOS and x86 machines that run any other operating system. Thus, if you’re looking for an x86 machine, you’re not buying an Apple product. This isn’t some inconvenient truth. If you include macs in a PC review… there isn’t any point. You’d be comparing apples with oranges. Yes. I wrote this entire comment to make that joke. :)
- duxup 4y ago
  I don’t get it. A product is significantly better… don’t compare it to, competitors?
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    It's a competitor in the same sense my smart fridge is a competitor. It's a locked down appliance that I'd have to hack to do what I want with.
    - jitl 4y ago
      What hacking is needed to get a Mac to do what you want?
    - duxup 4y ago
      Compared to what? Is that what reviewers are comparing?
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Cool? I mean sure, if when you're picking out a computer it's because you're going to run some variant of Linux/BSD on it then yeah, that's relevant. Or if you have specific Software needs that only run on Windows, macOS, or Linux then that's the decision made. But if you're just looking for a general purpose computer then they're absolutely competitors since the list of popular software that's macos/windows exclusive is small. And if the argument is "well if you don't have high-performance needs and you're just <pejorative about what people use computers for> then why does it matter" the answer is because the battery life is incredible and the thing is unbelievably snappy and responsive.
Kukumber 4y ago
They are not reviews, they are literally ads disguised as reviews They probably have signed some juicy sponsorships with the Intel PCs and none from Apple Their links says it all To me personally, it's clear that Apple made every Intel/AMD laptop companies out of business, they are stuck since 2 decades ago Apple with ARM and specialy their care with performance/watt and focus on energy efficiency changed the game
- fartcannon 4y ago
  Flag it. Flag every submarine ad on Hacker News. It'd be a boon for the site if it treated every positive article from companies with marketing budgets as astroturfing until proven otherwise. Same goes for political articles. And anyone caught at any time trying to game the system. Just blanket deleted for a set period of time. Offend again? Longer time. Third time? You're done. Forever. The main page would only be cool projects and interesting tech news, instead of flame wars by confused people who think Apple and the rest of FAANG are a football teams. There's literally no downside.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    I can't flag and i can't downvote, so i just comment And i don't think flagging is the answer, leaving a comment to educate the readers is better than trying to censor things
    - fartcannon 4y ago
      Comments pointing it out are good. I'm replying to you though because this is the first time I've ever heard anyone say that not wanting to look at marketing/PR/astroturfing is censorship. Lots of people disagree about what is or isn't that stuff, but never that blocking it would be censorship. Interesting take, thanks for your contribution.
ETH_start 4y ago
- gumby 4y ago
  The very title of the piece provides that metaphor, and why not?
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    "an inconvenient truth" predates Gore's movie of that title.
- bnj 4y ago
  This metaphor is what the article is built in though: that excluding MacBooks from comparative reviews is a denial in the same way that Fox News denies climate change— Both of which should be non-political topics, according to NASA[0] [0]: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    That's not my point. My point is that there are plenty of leftwing denials as well, and that singling out Fox News is such a cliched, partisan-reveal.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      I'll agree that it's a cliche but since the article was an allegory to An Inconvenient Truth any example of "someone who has part or all of their identity wrapped up in denying climate change" is going to be someone on the right political spectrum and Fox News/Drudge/Hannity have more name recognition than say Inhofe or Morano.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    If that is the metaphor the article is built on then it's starting from a point of illconsidered bias. That would seem to undermine the moat of the article... It's possible to have made the argument and the point you've inferred here without triggering the partisan elements. And that's the part you seem to be missing.
diziet 4y ago
The reason for exclusion of Apple products might have something to do with how the Apple Affiliate program ( https://www.apple.com/shop/performance-partners https://www.apple.com/shop/performance-partners ) functions. Wirecutter doesn't seem to list products without strong affiliate programs. See previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31541669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31541669
- nojito 4y ago
  >Wirecutter doesn't seem to list products without strong affiliate programs. Which are from retailers not manufacturers... What's the issue there?
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Sometimes Apple products are not available from third-parties at launch. IIRC, iPads were not on Amazon for quite a while.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      Sometimes they are not even available from Apple at launch. I found it pretty ridiculous that at Apple's most recent event they announced a product (the M2) that not only wasn't available for purchase, but that couldn't even be pre-ordered.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        This is perhaps ridiculous but not at all uncommon. iPhones are never available for order at the events where they are announced. Sometimes computers are, but not ones in high demand. A slight delay makes sense for fairness (everyone knows when they’ll be available for order and can try simultaneously), but this is the first time I can remember them saying “next month” as the time when they’d be available and ready for preorder.
    - nojito 4y ago
      This hasn’t been true in years.
blinding-streak 4y ago
Why does Gruber refuse to have a mobile friendly website? It's 2022.
- jackvalentine 4y ago
  You gonna make it for him?
- cosmotic 4y ago
  I had little issue reading it on my mobile.
- duxup 4y ago
  It worked in Firefox on my iPhone.
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  Pinch to zoom Mr. Mobile. Some people don't want 2 websites to maintain or just want to keep their publishing overhead to what they're used to.
JohnDeHope 4y ago
invalidname 4y ago
This was explained well by early reviewers: the benchmarks are too different to compare at this point and a bit immature for Apples new architecture. Some of the benchmarks only ran in Intel mode which puts Apple at an unfair disadvantage and might bias the results. Other benchmarks weren't designed for machines like the M1 Max and leave it well below 100% utilization even when natively compiled. A completely new cross platform benchmark is needed to do a proper comparison. There are still some benchmarks on Ars comparing both architectures when applicable e.g when Intel launched the new CPUs and claimed they were faster than the M1 Ars ran the comparison to test that claim.
- danaris 4y ago
  Is there any reason to think that the benchmarks, once improved to more accurately capture what the Apple Silicon chips do, will show it performing worse than they do now? 'Cause if they're only likely to give better results later on, that just supports TFA's thesis even more...
  - invalidname 4y ago
    I don't think showing misleading numbers supports anything. It's not like there were no benchmarks comparing Intel and M1. There were plenty of those and it's pretty easy to find them. So we should have a sense of what these "broken benchmarks" indicate. Showing a flawed misleading comparison for every laptop that comes out is redundant and misleading regardless of the direction.
aragilar 4y ago
Assuming https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops/ is the article being referred to, then the first section is what OS (with choices between Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, with MacOS kinda being recommended), and a whole section on which Apple laptop to get.
pragmatic 4y ago
There’s a wide segment of users (50-75% ??) that could simply use Chromebooks ( I buy then for my parents). People can use them easily. Switching to a Mac is not so easy, because EVERYTHING is different ( but everyone knows how to use a browser) If you are a PC gamer by definition a Mac will not work for you. For those of us with high end needs and can run on Macs (devs, etc) then of course the perf comparison is valid. But everyone is not us (devs, etc) This is a strange article. I think many review sites have split the reviews into best iPhone/best android and best Mac/best windows laptop as there is simply no point in trying to convert people from their religion. To my original point, the one area Apple can’t (won’t) compete is on price. Not everyone needs an expensive super thin laptop. Some people can spend $500 and get exactly what they need in a laptop.
- LionTamer 4y ago
  Apple seems to be reconsidering the exclusive targeting of the higher end of the market with the iPhone SE - I wonder if they may make a similar move with Macs at some point which would allow them to compete on price. Especially if Apple continues their emphasis on services/recurring revenue, I could see a future in which they sell a (relatively) inexpensive MacBook for the possibility of opening themselves up to a market of consumers who could pair that with the future equivalent of an iPhone SE and be happy Apple Music subscribers.
tommyage 4y ago
Please cross compile on x86 for arm64-apple-darwin with gcc. After doing this, you should have more insight about these macs.
florbo 4y ago
When I compare products with similar price/performance/efficiency ratios there's no one product/company that stands out to me. What the fuck is everyone on...
jti107 4y ago
well for the same reason they dont really compare Android phones to iPhones. we're past the point where it matters for most people. most phones today are fast enough and what matters are things like which os you like, battery life, camera performance, software support. very few people buy phones now based on the raw geekbench #'s if you look hard enough there are benchmarks comparing apple to windows/linux for video editing, blender, compiling code, etc. the take away for the past couple years is that Apple is head and shoulders over anybody else in performance/watt
willnonya 4y ago
Why did this article need to become overtly political? This post seems to be as limited in its grasps of tech ology as it is in politics.
KBme 4y ago
I would say this reason is probably not why they do it, but it would be my kustification: you basically do not own the hardware. You purchase the right to us it. You might be happy with that, just as you might be happy with 8$ a gallon (cuz climuh change you know), but others might not agree.
mstaoru 4y ago
Interesting. I have a 12900HX laptop with 4 × 2T 980 Pro-s, upgradeable to 128G DDR5 RAM. It has a large bright 4K screen, mechanical keyboard with Cherry keys, and one PCIe v5 slot for next gen 15GB/s SSDs. It is cold and extremely quiet in normal work, gets about 5h battery life under Manjaro w/5.17 kernel. It compiles our clang projects 2-3x faster than 2022 MBP models, installs software faster than MBP users finish typing "brew install", and native Docker and general VM performance on BTRFS RAID10 is so much faster it's not even funny. I'm fine with not having XXX hours battery life which I don't need since I work at a desk, on a laptop with ridiculous amounts of telemetry which I cannot even fully control. To me, my laptop (MSI GT77) is by far the best laptop right now. Really don't get this focus on battery life that Apple peddles this year.
- h05sz487b 4y ago
  Price & usecase wise your machine should be compared to a Mac Studio, no? And let‘s see what an actual Mac Pro performs like.
  - wtallis 4y ago
    > Price & usecase wise your machine should be compared to a Mac Studio, no? Also weight: over 7lbs, and it doesn't even look like that counts the power brick necessary to use the full performance of that machine. It's not a laptop by any reasonable definition; it's a luggable. It's desktop parts squeezed into a form factor that resembles a laptop until you put it next to a real human for scale.
    - mstaoru 4y ago
      3rd party GaN power brick is fine, not cheap (~$100) but works well at about 1/3 the size of the stock charger (which IS monstrous). I think later this year we might see slightly smaller HX form factors with Legion 7i and others coming soon. I never really understood why extra 3-4 lbs is such a big deal, I do carry a lot of gear every day though (and squat fairly heavy), so it might be a question of habit. :-)
sofixa 4y ago
No, they're just different devices with some overlap. When searching for a laptop to buy, providing Apple MacBooks in the comparison would be about as useful as adding iPads or Chromebooks - it could work as "if you only care about X, check out our article on this other type of product", but that's it. Apple's products mostly make sense within it's ecosystem. If you're not already there, there are a lot of hurdles and useless things. As a lifelong Windows and Linux user (with a couple of years of iMac usage at school), i now have a work provided MacBook Pro. Almost every other week i discover something new about it that annoys me - be it Pages automatically saving in its own shitty proprietary format instead of the original, the impossibility to have separate scroll order between mouse and touchpad, that while it sleeps Bluetooth is still on thus tricking various devices to connect to it, that i have to run a keylogger to add custom shortcuts and remap some keys, that fullscreen apps go to a separate workspace so I can't switch between their windows, etc. etc. And there are extra annoyances due to the architecture change, like having to re/cross compile stuff manually (for my specific use case). And it can't run games. As others said, it's apples to oranges. "Casual" users can usually barely handle the OS they know and use, what makes anyone think they can switch to a different one with different logic?
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  My (subjective and probably limited) experience as a sysadmin and security and platform engineer for the past 7-ish years has shown me that a large portion of users in highly technical roles (not usually the majority in a company) are issued Macbooks. Especially in the cloud role that I currently occupy, it seems like MacOS hits that nice balance for most corporations of providing a powerful Unix userspace while being somewhat easy to use and very secure (especially compared to the default posture of most Linux desktop machines). That being said, I can understand being annoyed with aspects of MacOS. I have a work issued Intel Mac and Dell XPS that I have running Arch and I much prefer my Linux machine. But I think that if MacOS wasn't an option most places wouldn't even have a Unix/Unix-like option for their employees' workstations.
jacknews 4y ago
The Apple ecosystem is separate from the Windows ecosystem, even more so lately. And Apple silicon machines can't run windows at all, whereas the intel ones could be coaxed into it. So there's just no real point in comparing Apple and Wintel machines side by side. The article seems like a conspiracy theory.
fold3 4y ago
Yes I noticed it too that more than once, pc news channels would only compare intel vs amd while the elephant in the room was that theses companies were both trying to catch up with apple cpus. On the other hand you also have apple users that only care about comparing macbooks with other macbook. So it kinda goes both ways. I would rather think that people who are OS agnostic and just care about their programs working to the best are a minority.
fold3 4y ago
Not sure what to make of it but according to nothlebookcheck benchmark[1] it seems like the AMD 6800u is very close to apple M2, close enough to consider it as a viable alternative. The biggests wins of the m2 are still power efficiency and neural engine for video rendering. [1]https://www.notebookcheck.net/M2-vs-R7-6800U_14521_14088.247596.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/M2-vs-R7-6800U_14521_14088.247...
haunter 4y ago
>many computer enthusiasts who do not like Macs, so they’ve gone into denial, like Fox News cultists and climate change Fuck this guy. Wish I can flag this multiple times into the oblivion. I don't like Macs because they are locked down both on software and hardware. It's not a "personal" computer. Literally have to dance around Apple's limitation all the time if you want to use something not approved by the high and almighty. If you want to live a walled garden so be it. But don't call people "Fox News cultists and climate change deniers" just because they want to use something else.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mieses 4y ago
  and his kindergarten markup language wastes so much human and machine energy it could be measurable contributor to global CO2.
ItsTotallyOn 4y ago
The author suggests that comparing Arm vs. x86 is easy due to a Geekbench test comparison. That's one of very few cross-platform benchmarks and highlights the fact that the author isn't very well-versed (if versed at all) in competitive performance analysis or PC benchmarks. Geekbench is a terrible proxy for ANY workload, those subtests all run within the space of a few seconds -- they aren't meant to actually represent performance in sustained workloads. Additionally, the smashing together of results from a wide range of incomparable applications, including unfair weighting that skews for memory, makes the cumulative scores largely worthless. Finding other relevant benchmarks for comparison is difficult, especially given the locked down nature of MacOS.
thefz 4y ago
"apple silicon is the best so undoubtedly whoever is not putting it first, is wrong" This guy is hilarious.
freediver 4y ago
Likely the reason for exclusion of Apple laptops in most "Top/Best Laptops for 2022" posts is because these reviews are essentially clickbait affilate link schemes, and (most of the time) you can't make money selling new Apple laptops via affiliate links.

103 points by alehlopeh 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago

Gruber is smoking something. Comparing Apple to PC laptops has never been common in these "best laptop" articles.

fredgrott 4y ago
He is not smoking something but remembering a time of Apple just right after Jobs left the first time when after macs got expansion slots they started comparing macs to PCs. Yes, old enough to remember that and expanding Performa macs for more performance.
Cyberdog 4y ago
To be fair, the original author of the quoted article is probably doing most of the smoking of things. All Gruber did is restate it and add the obnoxious political snipe at the end. Windows people, how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be before you'd start to consider using something other than Windows? I know if the question were flipped and given to me as a Mac user, the answer would have to be something like "fast enough that the muscle memory and system knowledge I've gained from three decades of Mac use could be overcome by sheer system speed of the Windows machine," and that would have to be pretty damned fast. Given that it's pretty irrelevant to me to compare the two.
- bnj 4y ago
  If the reason it doesn’t make sense to include the (faster, more power efficient) MacBooks in reviews is that windows users would have to see way higher value before they’d even consider switching… then shouldn’t that just be stated in the review? That the purpose of the review is to compare x86 laptops? If a review is looking at hardware, and MacBooks are out there, shouldn’t they be included for the benefit of people who are actually trying to understand their purchase options?
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Let me try restating my point: Windows users know how to be productive in Windows. How many of these people will be willing to give up that knowledge for a Mac that may be faster in terms of brute speed but with which they will, at least initially, have no idea how to be productive with? Sit a person who's only ever used Windows their whole life in front of a Mac and ask them to find and launch a certain application. Once they realize there's no Start button they'll probably be completely lost.
    - bnj 4y ago
      Thanks, that’s helpful- and I agree with you that the time and energy required to learn a new OS is a big investment for users who are comfortable with what they have. But, it sounds like you and I land on two different sides of this. Your point seems to be that other OS machines shouldn’t be included because of that significant entry barrier, and my point is that if the review is being presented as a comparison of the best hardware options, then it’s not accurate to eliminate MacOS machines on the basis of software. I’d sooner see reviews either (a) compare exclusively same-OS machines and say so, or (b) disclaim that users might face that bigger entry barrier, but show the comparison and leave the decision of whether learning a new OS would be worth it to the reader
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  I would rather use a Linux machine but I have generally been using Windows due to the general lack of support for Linux. There are a variety of things Windows and Apple simply don't support, and the list of things Apple doesn't support is longer. There are some old games I enjoy playing with friend and they simply don't run on a Mac, for example. So it doesn't matter how fast the Mac is, I can't alt-tab over to the game then alt-tab back to my terminal and do something real quick, I need an entirely separate Apple machine if I want the terminal to be "fast." Speed is just not that useful to me, I want a general-purpose computer and it's fine if some features perform at 1/5th the speed, the computer is mostly idle anyway and while instant is obviously better versatility is the primary virtue I'm looking for.
- JohnDeHope 4y ago
  > how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be Until Macs run games, it's a pointless comparison. If Steam did for Macs what they did for Linux, then we'd have something interesting to talk about. But a PC without games is about as attractive as... a Ferrari, I guess. If somebody handed me a free 200K$ sports car, I'd just sell it. It's useless for my lifestyle. A PC that can't play games is equally useless to me.
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Steam exists on Mac, and while there are plenty of games that don't have Mac ports that I wish I could play (Stray being the most recent), there are still enough to keep me perpetually backlogged, and the limits are probably best for my wallet and productivity anyway.
    - 7speter 4y ago
      Steam exists on the mac and steam exists on linux. The need for linux ports is dwindling now that Steam has developed proton, a sort of rosetta that converts directx api calls into vulkan api calls, on linux
    - smaccona 4y ago
      Steam exists on macOS, but honestly it feels like a second class citizen to me. Lots of the games that used to work fine no longer work because they are 32-bit and are no longer supported on current macOS releases, which only support 64-bit binaries. We can argue back and forth all day about whether this is Apple’s fault or the developers’ fault, but a key giveaway to me is that Portal and Portal 2, which are (arguably at least) flagship games for Valve, have not have 64-but releases. I get that it’s not as simple as a recompile & release, but to my mind it’s a bit of a giveaway that macOS doesn’t seem to have enough gaming market share to force a re-release on 64-bit for all these games.
      - Cyberdog 4y ago
        As a huge fan of the Portal games, I feel your pain. I really miss them. Unfortunately Valve doesn't really seem to be in the market of making actual games anymore, so we'll probably never see a 64-bit upgrade. But like I said, I've still got other games to play. I've long ago made peace with the idea that I just can't play every game I want to play at any time on my Mac, and that's fine. Others will have a different opinion and that's fine too.
ksec 4y ago
Exactly. It is rare, not the norm. But Gruber rarely goes outside of Apple circle so he doesn't know any of these. I cant count how many times he got things factually wrong. ( And rarely correct himself ) I mean when certain things on PC were actually better, did Gruber ever mentions it as an inconvenient truth? Those rare reviews included MacBook when it could run Bootcamp ( Windows ). From a comparative point of view at least that make sense. Buyer aren't looking for Hardware differences, if nerds want to pinpoint that with GB5 they would have known. And it is not like these site completely ignore Apple products either. They are just done in a separate article.
- danaris 4y ago
  > I mean when certain things on PC were actually better, did Gruber ever mentions it as an inconvenient truth? ...Why would he? There are hundreds of tech publications and bloggers who will cheerfully talk about why Windows computers are better than Macs, and have been basically since the release of Windows 1.0. He's calling this "an inconvenient truth" because he's seeing a trend among supposedly cross-platform reviews that say the Apple Silicon-based computers are faster than any of the Intel computers being reviewed......and then just say "but the Intel one is the best!" without justifying that with any explanation about how obviously anyone who's looking to do real work needs a Windows computer or something.
runjake 4y ago
Except MacBooks and PC laptops are being compared in the linked Ars article: "They're going head to head with Apple's MacBook Pros—at the event announcing the systems, Microsoft even made this comparison explicitly." Edit: Here's various tech outfits directly comparing Apple MacBooks to traditional PCs for "best laptop: The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/21250695/best-laptops https://www.theverge.com/21250695/best-laptops CNET: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptop/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptop/ PCMAG: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-laptops https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-laptops Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/best-laptops-120008636.html https://www.engadget.com/best-laptops-120008636.html

russellbeattie 4y ago

Aww! I love these threads! 40 years or so of Apple and PC fanboys going at it. That's at least three generations of geeks! It's comforting like a bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese or hot cocoa on a cold day. It's nice! It reminds of days long past when I actually gave a fuck. :-)

smoldesu 4y ago

I mean, here's an inconvenient truth: the software I use on a daily basis doesn't work on ARM. The software I develop at work doesn't run on ARM. If there was a laptop that could replace my T460s with 20 hours of battery life, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, an x86 laptop with 4 hours of battery life is always going to be more productive than an ARM Macbook/Raspberry Pi for my purposes. I don't think that's denial, it's just the transactional cost of Apple continuing to cut people out of their ecosystem. That's a perfectly fine decision for them to make, but if you can't argue that Apple Silicon will work for everybody, you're defending a moot point. They could make a laptop with 100 hours of battery life, but if it can't run my Docker containers for work, then it can't replace what I have already.

brundolf 4y ago
> but if it can't run my Docker containers for work I don't understand; Docker Desktop for Apple Silicon runs x86 containers out of the box
- saxonww 4y ago
  At slower speeds, enough that depending on what you're doing, it's not usable. And it's not guaranteed to work anyway. We had some processes which I guess were compiled to use instructions that qemu wasn't emulating, so they would crash with illegal instruction errors. Another annoyance is that your package repo may not actually publish arm versions of packages you use. This is usually the case for older stuff, e.g. MySQL 5.x was not released for arm and won't compile without backports. So, to fix the performance issues with emulation you may need to build some things yourself. Not a big deal, but also not an out of the box experience.
spindle 4y ago
And for many of us the software we use can run on ARM but it's extra work to make it run and that has to be factored in.
neonsunset 4y ago
You have never used an arm64 MacBook. Otherwise, you would know that almost all compatibility issues have been solved long time ago.

charlie0 4y ago

I'm sure reviewers' "advertising partners" are none too happy to have another machine outperform their x86 machines so badly as to tacitly imply that no one should buy them. The reviewers need to pay their bills. It's no surprise they are going to take the Macbooks out of the comparison sheets even though, for all intents and purposes, they so the same thing as Windows laptops. There are way more of them than there are ARM laptops. And yeah, I get it that in this crowd, there are many people that that need x86. But for the vast majority of consumers, all they need is a machine that can surf the web and open up spreadsheets.

smoldesu 4y ago
> But for the vast majority of consumers, all they need is a machine that can surf the web and open up spreadsheets. Okay, so why should they buy a $1,200 base model Macbook Air instead of a $200 Lenovo Chromebook? Better yet, why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients?
- haswell 4y ago
  > why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients? 1. Take out the “vast majority of consumers”, and there’s still a large enough market for both devices. 2. “All they need” and “all they want” are two different things. 3. Apple is in a business to make money, and people are willing to pay.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Better yet, why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients? Well, they are. Remember apple's "what's a computer?" ads last year? And the higher end ipads cost more than the lowest priced macs. They make different products for different use cases. Personally I do development on an macbook air, which is already so light I sometimes have to check my bag to make sure I haven't forgotten it.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Because have you every actually used one of those cheap ass computers. They're absolute trash, the keyboard is wiggly, the trackpad feels awful, the screen is low res and can't handle sunlight, the wifi chip is cheap and unreliable, the speakers sound awful, the battery life is abysmal, you get no support, and it's frustratingly slow. I wouldn't wish anything you can buy at Bestbuy on my worst enemy. If anything someone who is going to be using a laptop a lot but has modest actual computing needs is the perfect candidate for a laptop that prioritizes build quality. Look, Apple isn't the only game in town when it comes to nice laptops, the Surface Book is really nice, but when you're comparing "computers I actually want to use for any extended period of time" $1200 isn't all that expensive.

neonsunset 4y ago

While I don't like the phrasing in the article, I think the author is right that it is hypocritical of reviewers to exclude MacBooks from comparison. Especially for professional work as a dev, nothing ever comes close to the value proposition of the base MBP 14" model.

smoldesu 4y ago
> nothing ever comes close to the value proposition of the base MBP 14" model. Really? I bet you can buy a laptop for 1/10th the price that can do 90% of the same software dev tasks. The only thing the 14" does better is iOS development, which you don't have a choice of machines for anyways. I love a lot of things about the 14" Macbook Pro, but defending it's value proposition is something I can't really understand. It's a $2,000 laptop running the same OS as a $900 laptop, running the same git binary that you execute on a $35 Raspberry Pi. I don't see it.
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  But how does that $900 PC hold up over time compared to a Mac? In my personal experience, I get about 2-3 years out of a PC, and about 5 out of a Mac, which justifies the price tag for me.
  - arvinsim 4y ago
    That is only if you are ok sticking with the same specs on your machine for 5 years and risk using a machine outside of its warranty period. Personally, I would rather sell my machine just before the warranty runs out(about 3 years) and buy a new one.
    - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
      > risk using a machine outside of its warranty period. For a Mac, I'm pretty comfortable using the machine outside of its warranty period compared to a PC.

greenthrow 4y ago

Gruber isn't always right, but he's right here. I use Macs and Thinkpads for work. My M1 Mac is by far the fastest and also has by far the best battery life and uses the fans the least often. x86 is way behind ARM right now.

organsnyder 4y ago
I have a 14" M1 MBP from work. I've never purchased a Mac for personal use, but that's going to change when I can justify replacing my Thinkpad. They made an impressive machine while also taking away all of my hangups with the hardware (keyboard, ports, touchbar).
- RileyJames 4y ago
  Feel exactly the same. I have an M1 16” MBP from work. At first it felt way too big, now I love it. My personal machine is an XPS 13” on ubuntu, which is old now, and feels old (slow). But it’s the touchpad, screen, keyboard and battery that make it so hard to swap between.
- Halan 4y ago
  I have the 16inch and I have never heard it’s fan. Not even while doing some intense multitasking in a room at 30 degrees Celsius. If they had told me this was possible two years ago I would have laughed
_fat_santa 4y ago
I recently started a project with a client that shipped me a laptop. It's one of the new MBP's with an M1 Pro. Even with all the crapware this client loves to pile on these machines (standard enterprise MDM fare), this is still by far the fastest computer I've used. The fact that this thing is noticeably faster than my "main" work machine which has the same amount of ram, zero company crapware (oh how i love working for small and med sized corps) but an i7. The i7 machine is fast, chews through anything that I throw at it, but the M1 Pro is just faster, like noticeably faster all-around, not just under certain workloads. I've thrown around the idea of dropping big money ($4.8k the way I specced it) on a Mac Studio with an M1 Max. Up until now the idea was silly considering I have a perfectly good Macbook Pro from work without any spyware that I get for free. But dammit this M1 loaner might have pushed me over the edge.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

There's a commercial bias at play with pretty much all review content, print or otherwise. I've been griping about this for years now. The major outlets and Youtubers all have relationships with various vendors in order to get early access to products so their reviews can coincide with the product launch. This creates an inherent conflict of interest that has to shape their reviews in some form or another. The problem is that there's no transparency at all. They're talking with company reps before a product launches and signing embargo agreements to not release content early. I'm not saying that every piece of review content is low quality shill clickbait BS, but the reviewer has a relationship with a company and there's no way that doesn't influence their work given that early access is important for staying relevant in the space.

dmix 4y ago
I see this sort of complaint like RedLetterMedia making fun of Nerd podcasts [1] by satirizing how they are given gift bags, white glove early screenings, and emails with (marketing) executives but if you look at YouTube or most media there’s plenty of critique of superhero/‘capeshit’ movies. We’re not all being forced to watch cable tv and read the same two local newspapers anymore. Some people like lowest common denominator McDonalds-type corporate content. I don’t see that changing in the future (ie, some future where these people are better informed). But maybe I’m just cynical. [1] https://youtu.be/UCIYCaXNe88 https://youtu.be/UCIYCaXNe88
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  Yeah, but you're not seeing the conversations going on behind the scenes. This[0] is a great video that dives into how tablet manufacturers manipulate artists into shilling for their products. This kind of behavior is much more commonplace among tech review culture than people want to acknowledge (i.e. companies signing off on review videos before their posted, giving out free samples in exchange for positive reviews, etc.) Ultimately, the goal of advertising now is to generate advertising content that doesn't look like advertising. Review videos are an incredible vehicle to accomplish this. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH1WEYF8rlA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH1WEYF8rlA

user249 4y ago

Mac enthusiasts just can't accept the fact that people prefer to buy Windows machines over Macs by a wide margin. I used to be one of them, but the closed hardware approach and the "we know best" attitude turned me off long ago. That said, if I needed a super fast machine to do graphics or video, I'd look seriously at the new chips. I don't need such a machine.

dingleberry420 4y ago
If you needed such a machine you should buy a desktop with intel cpu and nvidia gpu. it'll cost less than a macbook and run circles around it
- user249 4y ago
  Thanks. I've got a Mac enthusiast friend who says otherwise, but he's such a Mac fanatic (and a Gruber fan) that I don't trust his judgement
wyuenho 4y ago
Most people prefer to buy Wintel not because of religious or philosophical reasons of "closed" vs "open". Most people buy Wintel for the simple fact that most of the world aren't rich western countries, when they need computing devices, they buy the cheaper ones, which are Wintel. For "computer enthusiasts", all they care about is games. If macOS could play the full Steam catalog, they would all flock to the Mac.
- user249 4y ago
  Yes, I forgot about price. The premium paid for Apple products isn't worth it to me

ModernMech 4y ago

Personally I have both a surface studio laptop and a MBP. I find myself using the surface much more due to the touchscreen and pen input. It’s plenty fast and has great battery that lasts all day. Sure the MBP is really fast, but I mean, so what? So is the Surface. If I need to sign something on the MBP I still have to pull out an iPad, and I guess that’s the way Apple wants it.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago
This is what kills me about Apple right now. I want MacOS on the iPad so badly and I know I'm not the only one. They've kinda painted themselves into a corner as the iPads now run basically the same silicon as the MacBooks with such a stripped down OS. Having the option to run MacOS on the iPad would be incredible, but it would also likely cannibalize their market.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Having the option to run MacOS on the iPad would be incredible, but it would also likely cannibalize their market. I don't see it -- an ipad pro costs about the same amount or more than a macbook air. Seems like they could easily get a similar margin on either device. > I want MacOS on the iPad so badly and I know I'm not the only one. I've never understood this. I'd be curious if you could give me some perspective. I do know a lot of people would like it, so it's likely I'm just not seeing what they do. I do like some convergence between the two platforms (similar functionality / "pick up either device and continue where you left off" on a lot of apps from messaging to 3P apps like OmniFocus) but I often switch from the ipad to the mac because of the power of the keyboard and the interface metaphors. Microsoft has tried to jam the two together without (in IMHO) success as they have different affordances. Keyboard on an ipad is meh -- my macbook air is lighter than an ipad + magic keyboard. I use my ipad a lot, both standalone for reading and as a pen accessory for my mac (Apple needs to do more work on this use case). I see lots of good, remaining opportunities for overlap but wouldn't want the OS of one on the hardware of the either.
  - ModernMech 4y ago

kayodelycaon 4y ago

I’m an Apple fan and let me roll my eyes. This is nonsense. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Apple’s latest laptops have thoroughly wiped the floor against PCs. If that’s the case, Apple’s computers are in a completely different class. You now have ARM machines that run macOS and x86 machines that run any other operating system. Thus, if you’re looking for an x86 machine, you’re not buying an Apple product. This isn’t some inconvenient truth. If you include macs in a PC review… there isn’t any point. You’d be comparing apples with oranges. Yes. I wrote this entire comment to make that joke. :)

duxup 4y ago
I don’t get it. A product is significantly better… don’t compare it to, competitors?
- fartcannon 4y ago
  It's a competitor in the same sense my smart fridge is a competitor. It's a locked down appliance that I'd have to hack to do what I want with.
  - jitl 4y ago
    What hacking is needed to get a Mac to do what you want?
  - duxup 4y ago
    Compared to what? Is that what reviewers are comparing?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Cool? I mean sure, if when you're picking out a computer it's because you're going to run some variant of Linux/BSD on it then yeah, that's relevant. Or if you have specific Software needs that only run on Windows, macOS, or Linux then that's the decision made. But if you're just looking for a general purpose computer then they're absolutely competitors since the list of popular software that's macos/windows exclusive is small. And if the argument is "well if you don't have high-performance needs and you're just <pejorative about what people use computers for> then why does it matter" the answer is because the battery life is incredible and the thing is unbelievably snappy and responsive.

Kukumber 4y ago

They are not reviews, they are literally ads disguised as reviews They probably have signed some juicy sponsorships with the Intel PCs and none from Apple Their links says it all To me personally, it's clear that Apple made every Intel/AMD laptop companies out of business, they are stuck since 2 decades ago Apple with ARM and specialy their care with performance/watt and focus on energy efficiency changed the game

fartcannon 4y ago
Flag it. Flag every submarine ad on Hacker News. It'd be a boon for the site if it treated every positive article from companies with marketing budgets as astroturfing until proven otherwise. Same goes for political articles. And anyone caught at any time trying to game the system. Just blanket deleted for a set period of time. Offend again? Longer time. Third time? You're done. Forever. The main page would only be cool projects and interesting tech news, instead of flame wars by confused people who think Apple and the rest of FAANG are a football teams. There's literally no downside.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  I can't flag and i can't downvote, so i just comment And i don't think flagging is the answer, leaving a comment to educate the readers is better than trying to censor things
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    Comments pointing it out are good. I'm replying to you though because this is the first time I've ever heard anyone say that not wanting to look at marketing/PR/astroturfing is censorship. Lots of people disagree about what is or isn't that stuff, but never that blocking it would be censorship. Interesting take, thanks for your contribution.

ETH_start 4y ago

gumby 4y ago
The very title of the piece provides that metaphor, and why not?
- ETH_start 4y ago
  "an inconvenient truth" predates Gore's movie of that title.
bnj 4y ago
This metaphor is what the article is built in though: that excluding MacBooks from comparative reviews is a denial in the same way that Fox News denies climate change— Both of which should be non-political topics, according to NASA[0] [0]: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
- ETH_start 4y ago
  That's not my point. My point is that there are plenty of leftwing denials as well, and that singling out Fox News is such a cliched, partisan-reveal.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    I'll agree that it's a cliche but since the article was an allegory to An Inconvenient Truth any example of "someone who has part or all of their identity wrapped up in denying climate change" is going to be someone on the right political spectrum and Fox News/Drudge/Hannity have more name recognition than say Inhofe or Morano.
- willnonya 4y ago
  If that is the metaphor the article is built on then it's starting from a point of illconsidered bias. That would seem to undermine the moat of the article... It's possible to have made the argument and the point you've inferred here without triggering the partisan elements. And that's the part you seem to be missing.

diziet 4y ago

The reason for exclusion of Apple products might have something to do with how the Apple Affiliate program ( https://www.apple.com/shop/performance-partners https://www.apple.com/shop/performance-partners ) functions. Wirecutter doesn't seem to list products without strong affiliate programs. See previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31541669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31541669

nojito 4y ago
>Wirecutter doesn't seem to list products without strong affiliate programs. Which are from retailers not manufacturers... What's the issue there?
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Sometimes Apple products are not available from third-parties at launch. IIRC, iPads were not on Amazon for quite a while.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    Sometimes they are not even available from Apple at launch. I found it pretty ridiculous that at Apple's most recent event they announced a product (the M2) that not only wasn't available for purchase, but that couldn't even be pre-ordered.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      This is perhaps ridiculous but not at all uncommon. iPhones are never available for order at the events where they are announced. Sometimes computers are, but not ones in high demand. A slight delay makes sense for fairness (everyone knows when they’ll be available for order and can try simultaneously), but this is the first time I can remember them saying “next month” as the time when they’d be available and ready for preorder.
  - nojito 4y ago
    This hasn’t been true in years.

blinding-streak 4y ago

Why does Gruber refuse to have a mobile friendly website? It's 2022.

jackvalentine 4y ago
You gonna make it for him?
cosmotic 4y ago
I had little issue reading it on my mobile.
duxup 4y ago
It worked in Firefox on my iPhone.
pcdoodle 4y ago
Pinch to zoom Mr. Mobile. Some people don't want 2 websites to maintain or just want to keep their publishing overhead to what they're used to.

JohnDeHope 4y ago

invalidname 4y ago

This was explained well by early reviewers: the benchmarks are too different to compare at this point and a bit immature for Apples new architecture. Some of the benchmarks only ran in Intel mode which puts Apple at an unfair disadvantage and might bias the results. Other benchmarks weren't designed for machines like the M1 Max and leave it well below 100% utilization even when natively compiled. A completely new cross platform benchmark is needed to do a proper comparison. There are still some benchmarks on Ars comparing both architectures when applicable e.g when Intel launched the new CPUs and claimed they were faster than the M1 Ars ran the comparison to test that claim.

danaris 4y ago
Is there any reason to think that the benchmarks, once improved to more accurately capture what the Apple Silicon chips do, will show it performing worse than they do now? 'Cause if they're only likely to give better results later on, that just supports TFA's thesis even more...
- invalidname 4y ago
  I don't think showing misleading numbers supports anything. It's not like there were no benchmarks comparing Intel and M1. There were plenty of those and it's pretty easy to find them. So we should have a sense of what these "broken benchmarks" indicate. Showing a flawed misleading comparison for every laptop that comes out is redundant and misleading regardless of the direction.

aragilar 4y ago

Assuming https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops/ is the article being referred to, then the first section is what OS (with choices between Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, with MacOS kinda being recommended), and a whole section on which Apple laptop to get.

pragmatic 4y ago

There’s a wide segment of users (50-75% ??) that could simply use Chromebooks ( I buy then for my parents). People can use them easily. Switching to a Mac is not so easy, because EVERYTHING is different ( but everyone knows how to use a browser) If you are a PC gamer by definition a Mac will not work for you. For those of us with high end needs and can run on Macs (devs, etc) then of course the perf comparison is valid. But everyone is not us (devs, etc) This is a strange article. I think many review sites have split the reviews into best iPhone/best android and best Mac/best windows laptop as there is simply no point in trying to convert people from their religion. To my original point, the one area Apple can’t (won’t) compete is on price. Not everyone needs an expensive super thin laptop. Some people can spend $500 and get exactly what they need in a laptop.

LionTamer 4y ago
Apple seems to be reconsidering the exclusive targeting of the higher end of the market with the iPhone SE - I wonder if they may make a similar move with Macs at some point which would allow them to compete on price. Especially if Apple continues their emphasis on services/recurring revenue, I could see a future in which they sell a (relatively) inexpensive MacBook for the possibility of opening themselves up to a market of consumers who could pair that with the future equivalent of an iPhone SE and be happy Apple Music subscribers.

tommyage 4y ago

Please cross compile on x86 for arm64-apple-darwin with gcc. After doing this, you should have more insight about these macs.

florbo 4y ago

When I compare products with similar price/performance/efficiency ratios there's no one product/company that stands out to me. What the fuck is everyone on...

jti107 4y ago

well for the same reason they dont really compare Android phones to iPhones. we're past the point where it matters for most people. most phones today are fast enough and what matters are things like which os you like, battery life, camera performance, software support. very few people buy phones now based on the raw geekbench #'s if you look hard enough there are benchmarks comparing apple to windows/linux for video editing, blender, compiling code, etc. the take away for the past couple years is that Apple is head and shoulders over anybody else in performance/watt

willnonya 4y ago

Why did this article need to become overtly political? This post seems to be as limited in its grasps of tech ology as it is in politics.

KBme 4y ago

I would say this reason is probably not why they do it, but it would be my kustification: you basically do not own the hardware. You purchase the right to us it. You might be happy with that, just as you might be happy with 8$ a gallon (cuz climuh change you know), but others might not agree.

mstaoru 4y ago

Interesting. I have a 12900HX laptop with 4 × 2T 980 Pro-s, upgradeable to 128G DDR5 RAM. It has a large bright 4K screen, mechanical keyboard with Cherry keys, and one PCIe v5 slot for next gen 15GB/s SSDs. It is cold and extremely quiet in normal work, gets about 5h battery life under Manjaro w/5.17 kernel. It compiles our clang projects 2-3x faster than 2022 MBP models, installs software faster than MBP users finish typing "brew install", and native Docker and general VM performance on BTRFS RAID10 is so much faster it's not even funny. I'm fine with not having XXX hours battery life which I don't need since I work at a desk, on a laptop with ridiculous amounts of telemetry which I cannot even fully control. To me, my laptop (MSI GT77) is by far the best laptop right now. Really don't get this focus on battery life that Apple peddles this year.

h05sz487b 4y ago
Price & usecase wise your machine should be compared to a Mac Studio, no? And let‘s see what an actual Mac Pro performs like.
- wtallis 4y ago
  > Price & usecase wise your machine should be compared to a Mac Studio, no? Also weight: over 7lbs, and it doesn't even look like that counts the power brick necessary to use the full performance of that machine. It's not a laptop by any reasonable definition; it's a luggable. It's desktop parts squeezed into a form factor that resembles a laptop until you put it next to a real human for scale.
  - mstaoru 4y ago
    3rd party GaN power brick is fine, not cheap (~$100) but works well at about 1/3 the size of the stock charger (which IS monstrous). I think later this year we might see slightly smaller HX form factors with Legion 7i and others coming soon. I never really understood why extra 3-4 lbs is such a big deal, I do carry a lot of gear every day though (and squat fairly heavy), so it might be a question of habit. :-)

sofixa 4y ago

No, they're just different devices with some overlap. When searching for a laptop to buy, providing Apple MacBooks in the comparison would be about as useful as adding iPads or Chromebooks - it could work as "if you only care about X, check out our article on this other type of product", but that's it. Apple's products mostly make sense within it's ecosystem. If you're not already there, there are a lot of hurdles and useless things. As a lifelong Windows and Linux user (with a couple of years of iMac usage at school), i now have a work provided MacBook Pro. Almost every other week i discover something new about it that annoys me - be it Pages automatically saving in its own shitty proprietary format instead of the original, the impossibility to have separate scroll order between mouse and touchpad, that while it sleeps Bluetooth is still on thus tricking various devices to connect to it, that i have to run a keylogger to add custom shortcuts and remap some keys, that fullscreen apps go to a separate workspace so I can't switch between their windows, etc. etc. And there are extra annoyances due to the architecture change, like having to re/cross compile stuff manually (for my specific use case). And it can't run games. As others said, it's apples to oranges. "Casual" users can usually barely handle the OS they know and use, what makes anyone think they can switch to a different one with different logic?

heywoodlh 4y ago
My (subjective and probably limited) experience as a sysadmin and security and platform engineer for the past 7-ish years has shown me that a large portion of users in highly technical roles (not usually the majority in a company) are issued Macbooks. Especially in the cloud role that I currently occupy, it seems like MacOS hits that nice balance for most corporations of providing a powerful Unix userspace while being somewhat easy to use and very secure (especially compared to the default posture of most Linux desktop machines). That being said, I can understand being annoyed with aspects of MacOS. I have a work issued Intel Mac and Dell XPS that I have running Arch and I much prefer my Linux machine. But I think that if MacOS wasn't an option most places wouldn't even have a Unix/Unix-like option for their employees' workstations.

jacknews 4y ago

The Apple ecosystem is separate from the Windows ecosystem, even more so lately. And Apple silicon machines can't run windows at all, whereas the intel ones could be coaxed into it. So there's just no real point in comparing Apple and Wintel machines side by side. The article seems like a conspiracy theory.

fold3 4y ago

Yes I noticed it too that more than once, pc news channels would only compare intel vs amd while the elephant in the room was that theses companies were both trying to catch up with apple cpus. On the other hand you also have apple users that only care about comparing macbooks with other macbook. So it kinda goes both ways. I would rather think that people who are OS agnostic and just care about their programs working to the best are a minority.

fold3 4y ago

Not sure what to make of it but according to nothlebookcheck benchmark[1] it seems like the AMD 6800u is very close to apple M2, close enough to consider it as a viable alternative. The biggests wins of the m2 are still power efficiency and neural engine for video rendering. [1]https://www.notebookcheck.net/M2-vs-R7-6800U_14521_14088.247596.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/M2-vs-R7-6800U_14521_14088.247...

haunter 4y ago

>many computer enthusiasts who do not like Macs, so they’ve gone into denial, like Fox News cultists and climate change Fuck this guy. Wish I can flag this multiple times into the oblivion. I don't like Macs because they are locked down both on software and hardware. It's not a "personal" computer. Literally have to dance around Apple's limitation all the time if you want to use something not approved by the high and almighty. If you want to live a walled garden so be it. But don't call people "Fox News cultists and climate change deniers" just because they want to use something else.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mieses 4y ago
and his kindergarten markup language wastes so much human and machine energy it could be measurable contributor to global CO2.

ItsTotallyOn 4y ago

The author suggests that comparing Arm vs. x86 is easy due to a Geekbench test comparison. That's one of very few cross-platform benchmarks and highlights the fact that the author isn't very well-versed (if versed at all) in competitive performance analysis or PC benchmarks. Geekbench is a terrible proxy for ANY workload, those subtests all run within the space of a few seconds -- they aren't meant to actually represent performance in sustained workloads. Additionally, the smashing together of results from a wide range of incomparable applications, including unfair weighting that skews for memory, makes the cumulative scores largely worthless. Finding other relevant benchmarks for comparison is difficult, especially given the locked down nature of MacOS.

thefz 4y ago

"apple silicon is the best so undoubtedly whoever is not putting it first, is wrong" This guy is hilarious.

freediver 4y ago

Likely the reason for exclusion of Apple laptops in most "Top/Best Laptops for 2022" posts is because these reviews are essentially clickbait affilate link schemes, and (most of the time) you can't make money selling new Apple laptops via affiliate links.