4 ms·

My MacBook Pro with M1 Pro is the first laptop I've had that hasn't had that slight hesitation that laptops have always had. I think this is why people praise A

My MacBook Pro with M1 Pro is the first laptop I've had that hasn't had that slight hesitation that laptops have always had. I think this is why people praise Apple Silicon so much even though the benchmark numbers may not always back it up - so many other people are also coming from similarly-hobbled laptops.

seanp2k2 4y ago
Agree, I’ll probably never buy another Intel laptop as long as AMD and Apple keep killing it with these things. I was hopeful that the Surface laptops would be good with ARM too but they’re not using the latest chips, they went for low/mid-tier performance, and Windows on ARM still sucks / relies too much on emulation to be fast. Some day maybe we’ll get REAL ARM hardware with dozens of cores, tons of memory bandwidth, USB4, and decent freaking GPUs. Sorry, but the idea of spending $2k on a laptop that runs last year’s mid-tier smartphone processor just doesn’t cut it. Maybe that’s fine for a Chromebook for schools or something.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sph 4y ago
I have a great desktop, and every day I curse Apple and Tim Cook because I cannot get an iPad Pro that runs full macOS. That would be the ideal device for me when I'm on the go, that I can still use to watch Youtube videos in the bathroom. I do not need a full laptop when I work at home with a $5,000 desktop PC, nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. It is really sad to have the tech to do something, but it doesn't exist because the bean counters said no.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. Meanwhile, the expensive laptops with actual desktop-class components have unacceptably shitty peripherals, so you can't even pay more money for what you want; it simply doesn't exist. This is what upsets me the most about laptops.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    What do you mean by shitty peripherals?
    - LoganDark 4y ago
      Low-DPI screens, bad webcams, keyboards with the wrong arrows/numpad layout, off-center trackpads etc. it's different for each person what they consider "shitty", but laptops are always a total package deal (except for Framework) and it can just so happen that nobody makes powerful laptops that also have the exact right permutation of peripherals. You can find all sorts of beautiful 4K ultrabooks with the perfect keyboard and trackpad layout, and great webcams too—if you don't mind putting up with a Celeron and 4GB of RAM... If you want a really modern and powerful CPU with lots of RAM, you'll be looking at the likes of Clevo and AORUS and etc. that put desktop-class parts in a thick chassis, but... that bodes terribly for the peripherals they end up using. Some of the Clevo machines have individual gimmicks like 300Hz displays, but none of them seem to have all of "high DPI, good keyboard layout, good port arrangement, high performance". And this is true for basically all laptop vendors. OEMs think good peripherals always equate to "thin and light" which results in bad performance, either through bad parts or bad thermals. Maybe Frore Systems' new cooling solution will help slightly with ultrabook thermals, but until that happens, laptops are just suck. You may notice that this only matters because I even care. You may also notice that this is exactly what building a desktop is for. I am building a desktop, but I also have to build a laptop from scratch for the desktop so I can operate it from bed. Which would have been avoidable if I could've found a laptop in the first place. The point anyway isn't to say that there aren't any good laptops out there, but rather that if you want high performance (e.g. you are bothered by slowness), you can only get it as a package deal with the rest of the laptop... obviously. But the package deals all suck. The laptop market is so annoying sometimes.
      - yafbum 4y ago
        I haven't really been in the market for a non-Apple laptop for a while (previously had to buy MacBook bc of specific software), so this gives me a great idea of what to watch out for when I get my next laptop. Thanks a lot!
- philjohn 4y ago
  Another option is to get the iPad (and magic keyboard and pencil) and remote desktop into your home machine. Put it behind a VPN, use wake-on-lan and boom, iPad is essentially a fully blown computer.
  - sph 4y ago
    No, that would turn it into a fully blown thin client. What is the point of having half a TB of storage, however many gigs of RAM, lidar, radar, sonar, and the best processor architecture money can buy to render a glorified, interactive video? I would like to be able to write code without having to pay the price of internet latency. I don't need a $1000 tablet to render RDP.
    - DANmode 4y ago
      Termux on Android does what you're asking for, but I doubt it's what you actually want. shrugs
- yafbum 4y ago
  On the other hand, there's a lot of great tech (including, I think, the iPad pro and Apple silicon) that just wouldn't exist if the bean counters hadn't said yes, it's a good idea to invest a few billions of dollars into this...
  - sph 4y ago
    Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles. It's the engineers that actually create the cool things.
    - yafbum 4y ago
      > Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles. I didn't claim that it was sufficient, but it is necessary. > It's the engineers that actually create the cool things. Of course. With other people's money (typically).
dreamcompiler 4y ago
Don't worry. Apple will figure out how to put that hesitation back in with a future MacOS upgrade. Probably with yet more phoning-home daemons in the name of security theater. Sorry for the snark. I'm just bitter because Apple is about to ruin Dropbox because they don't allow KEXTs any more. https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/ https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-m...
throw6969away 4y ago
> that slight hesitation that laptops have always had For me just getting a decent low-latency mouse (e.g., wired g203) and correctly configuring 100hz+ monitors has vastly improved my experience on my M1 Air and the shitty Thinkpad I use for work -- to the point where I haven't used my desktop in a long time.

seanp2k2 4y ago

Agree, I’ll probably never buy another Intel laptop as long as AMD and Apple keep killing it with these things. I was hopeful that the Surface laptops would be good with ARM too but they’re not using the latest chips, they went for low/mid-tier performance, and Windows on ARM still sucks / relies too much on emulation to be fast. Some day maybe we’ll get REAL ARM hardware with dozens of cores, tons of memory bandwidth, USB4, and decent freaking GPUs. Sorry, but the idea of spending $2k on a laptop that runs last year’s mid-tier smartphone processor just doesn’t cut it. Maybe that’s fine for a Chromebook for schools or something.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sph 4y ago

I have a great desktop, and every day I curse Apple and Tim Cook because I cannot get an iPad Pro that runs full macOS. That would be the ideal device for me when I'm on the go, that I can still use to watch Youtube videos in the bathroom. I do not need a full laptop when I work at home with a $5,000 desktop PC, nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. It is really sad to have the tech to do something, but it doesn't exist because the bean counters said no.

LoganDark 4y ago
> nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. Meanwhile, the expensive laptops with actual desktop-class components have unacceptably shitty peripherals, so you can't even pay more money for what you want; it simply doesn't exist. This is what upsets me the most about laptops.
- yafbum 4y ago
  What do you mean by shitty peripherals?
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    Low-DPI screens, bad webcams, keyboards with the wrong arrows/numpad layout, off-center trackpads etc. it's different for each person what they consider "shitty", but laptops are always a total package deal (except for Framework) and it can just so happen that nobody makes powerful laptops that also have the exact right permutation of peripherals. You can find all sorts of beautiful 4K ultrabooks with the perfect keyboard and trackpad layout, and great webcams too—if you don't mind putting up with a Celeron and 4GB of RAM... If you want a really modern and powerful CPU with lots of RAM, you'll be looking at the likes of Clevo and AORUS and etc. that put desktop-class parts in a thick chassis, but... that bodes terribly for the peripherals they end up using. Some of the Clevo machines have individual gimmicks like 300Hz displays, but none of them seem to have all of "high DPI, good keyboard layout, good port arrangement, high performance". And this is true for basically all laptop vendors. OEMs think good peripherals always equate to "thin and light" which results in bad performance, either through bad parts or bad thermals. Maybe Frore Systems' new cooling solution will help slightly with ultrabook thermals, but until that happens, laptops are just suck. You may notice that this only matters because I even care. You may also notice that this is exactly what building a desktop is for. I am building a desktop, but I also have to build a laptop from scratch for the desktop so I can operate it from bed. Which would have been avoidable if I could've found a laptop in the first place. The point anyway isn't to say that there aren't any good laptops out there, but rather that if you want high performance (e.g. you are bothered by slowness), you can only get it as a package deal with the rest of the laptop... obviously. But the package deals all suck. The laptop market is so annoying sometimes.
    - yafbum 4y ago
      I haven't really been in the market for a non-Apple laptop for a while (previously had to buy MacBook bc of specific software), so this gives me a great idea of what to watch out for when I get my next laptop. Thanks a lot!
philjohn 4y ago
Another option is to get the iPad (and magic keyboard and pencil) and remote desktop into your home machine. Put it behind a VPN, use wake-on-lan and boom, iPad is essentially a fully blown computer.
- sph 4y ago
  No, that would turn it into a fully blown thin client. What is the point of having half a TB of storage, however many gigs of RAM, lidar, radar, sonar, and the best processor architecture money can buy to render a glorified, interactive video? I would like to be able to write code without having to pay the price of internet latency. I don't need a $1000 tablet to render RDP.
  - DANmode 4y ago
    Termux on Android does what you're asking for, but I doubt it's what you actually want. shrugs
yafbum 4y ago
On the other hand, there's a lot of great tech (including, I think, the iPad pro and Apple silicon) that just wouldn't exist if the bean counters hadn't said yes, it's a good idea to invest a few billions of dollars into this...
- sph 4y ago
  Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles. It's the engineers that actually create the cool things.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    > Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles. I didn't claim that it was sufficient, but it is necessary. > It's the engineers that actually create the cool things. Of course. With other people's money (typically).

dreamcompiler 4y ago

Don't worry. Apple will figure out how to put that hesitation back in with a future MacOS upgrade. Probably with yet more phoning-home daemons in the name of security theater. Sorry for the snark. I'm just bitter because Apple is about to ruin Dropbox because they don't allow KEXTs any more. https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/ https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-m...

throw6969away 4y ago

> that slight hesitation that laptops have always had For me just getting a decent low-latency mouse (e.g., wired g203) and correctly configuring 100hz+ monitors has vastly improved my experience on my M1 Air and the shitty Thinkpad I use for work -- to the point where I haven't used my desktop in a long time.