7 ms·

I think the best reaction would be shame. Just a big round of shame for a trillion dollar company being so greedy to cripple their top equipment. Tech’s stagnat

by ianai 3y ago

I think the best reaction would be shame. Just a big round of shame for a trillion dollar company being so greedy to cripple their top equipment. Tech’s stagnated for over a decade and largely because of greed and at the expense of innovation. Prove me wrong? Do something genuinely new, like a mass produced cpu on germanium. Make a modern OS that’s a successor to unix-and plan9. Edit-Or at least a moddable iphone that can plug into a monitor/keyboard/mouse. Edit2-shame the company though, not the people who walk around carrying iphones or other apple devices. The company is the problem here.

runjake 3y ago
> Tech’s stagnated for over a decade I don’t know where to begin with this, but on topic, the M1 came out in 2020 and was a big tech leap in how PCs are done. Sure, all the individual technologies within existed elsewhere first. But Apple executed and delivered great products.
- ianai 3y ago
  Sure. Running an OS that is carrying a lot of legacy OS X with introduced bugs and cruft. I love *nix and hope to keep using it for a long time more. But if you plunked 2002 me into modern day, apple’s offerings would be pretty cool but not what I’d expect after 2 decades. You could buy a desktop with 4 gigs of ram in 2010.
  - ianai 3y ago
    They could get me to shut up for probably 4 years if they cemented a deal to produce the next Nintendo console with Nintendo in a way Nintendo would be fully onboard with delivering. Think steam deck or mac mini level of hardware/cost.
  - jsbisviewtiful 3y ago
    Most of your comments in this thread read like you are completely unaware of the tech and manufacturing leaps we've already passed and are currently trying to pass. You are allowed to complain if you want to, but your complaints are unsubstantiated. Signalling we haven't made significant and or substantial advances since 2002 is a joke - especially if your barometer is buying RAM. There's always research ongoing to improve tech and a lot of it is on the market already, but just because researchers figured something out doesn't mean it's feasible on a large manufacturing scale or that thermodynamics will even allow it to work well. Comparing devices in 2002 to 2023 and not noticing the drastic improvements just shows a lack of understanding and or signs of living in complete denial to just complain.
  - appplication 3y ago
    I bought my windows laptop with 8g of ram in 2009. It was nicer but certainly not top of the line. If I recall, I think the minimum you’d find at that time would be 4g, and some configurations offered 16g.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  What was the leap though? Pay huge sums for the best TSMC node and put as much as possible on package? Own the whole stack?
  - x0x0 3y ago
    I don't know what the leap was, just the effect: a combination of perf and battery life that puts everything else to shame.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    Marketing. It was a huge marketing leap for Apple to take credit for TSMC's node upgrades and claim it as some sort of great technological leap. Given that the next generation Snapdragon offers comparable performance to Apple's M line, it appears that node advances were responsible for a very large percentage of any performance gains.
    - musicale 3y ago
      Yeah, probably had nothing to do with Qualcomm acquiring Nuvia, etc.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  M1 was not that big of a leap for trillion dollar company. If you looked in A12 bionic or other processor from Apple before M1, M1 wasn't that different in IPC/core or any metric. Also Apple was 2 generation in semiconductor process ahead due to TSMC contracts. If you look closely, yes apple is bit better in manufacturing, bit better in materials etc. and I have many apple products, but its products isn't that different from many small companies. Unlike say Google, whose software engineering and scale they can handle for complex services is almost impossible to match for small companies.
  - runjake 3y ago
    It's entirely subjective and I'm going to disagree. I ran an A12Z Developer Transition Kit and then immediately upgraded to an M1 Mini and the raw performance was staggeringly faster. My followup question: if it's so easy and unimpressive, why aren't other companies doing it -- especially at similar performance-per-watt? The market is obviously there and they release "answers" to Apple Silicon that aren't really answers (again, perf-per-watt isn't there).
  - bluesign 3y ago
    This discussion is a bit like the dropbox/rsync comment, M1 was a huge leap for the users, I am yet to see anyone upgrading to M1 and not amazed around me. It was a technological huge leap or not is not the important part here in my opinion.
    - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
      Dropbox/rsync thread is so hyped here and most people haven't read it[1]. Firstly most comments were positive. Also the top comment poster who was negative first became positive later after explaination. Top commenter said "You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece of functionality for Windows users". Second commenter said "This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it". Also you missed the point of thread. I said I like Apple products. It's just that the stage they are in, they aren't trying to solve really tough problems which very likely will just loose money like say google does with quantum computing or AI. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- beAbU 3y ago
  There was a time in the late 90s and early aughts when by the time you've unboxed your new computer it's already out of date. I'm sure it was even more so in the 80's into the 90's, but that's a little before my time. We have not really had a quantum leap in the last 20 years. Even longer. Apple's M-series chips are the closest we've gotten in recent times I think.
  - mnky9800n 3y ago
    My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks But it was obsolete before I opened the box You say you've had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos?si=kbkY4H6nepvB7I0o https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos?si=kbkY4H6nepvB7I0o
    - beAbU 3y ago
      I don't even need to click the link. Weird Al' is speaking the truth here!
icapybara 3y ago
Innovation for the sake of innovation doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A CPU on germanium? Why? The semiconductor industry thought about it decided silicon was a better material platform 50 years ago.
- ianai 3y ago
  “The semiconductor industry thought about it decided silicon was a better material platform 50 years ago.” Because we’re stuck at a handful of cores and around 3ghz clock on silicon.
  - hellotomyrars 3y ago
    We are? I must not know how to count because those are not the numbers I have. What year is it where you are?
- EvgeniyZh 3y ago
  The decision was kind of arbitrary though, and now economy of scale makes it very hard to switch. For instance, GaAs is better semiconductor than silicone in many aspects, and probably somewhat better overall for chips, but switching to it would cost billions
spaceman_2020 3y ago
I’m in the market for a new Macbook. Should I get the M2 instead of the M3? The base M2 had 16GB RAM
- ianai 3y ago
  Honestly hold off until next year if you can or when they announce the M4. Otherwise probably get whatever you can afford to upgrade the RAM.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Or just wait until the year after for the M5.
    - ianai 3y ago
      Point being the jump from intel to M1 was much bigger than the jump from M1 to M3.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        We don't know what they're upgrading from, they could have an M1 already. If they do have an Intel machine, then yes, they should ideally buy an M1 rather than spending more for M2 or M3 which don't really seem to be that large of a jump but for a proportionally higher cost.
    - gizajob 3y ago
      I hear that the M6 is likely to be the most powerful chip they’ve ever produced.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  I replaced an M1 Pro with an M2 Air and have had nothing but improvements in my daily computing. Juggling Xcode, terminal tools, web browsers, Slack, Discord, music/podcasts, video streaming, video CALLS, all the background sync, email, VS Code, occasionally photoshop for flavor. It just doesn't slow down, at all, at any point. The M series SOCs are just fucking absurd. In every space besides gaming and graphics, they utterly lap PC's. I don't even remember the last time my Macbook wasn't charged enough to use, and I use it away from my desk quite a lot. Moving from my office PC to a Macbook has felt like being flung 6 years into the future.
elevation 3y ago
> The company is the problem here The author feigns indignance at Apple's margins, as if the only possible purpose for that markup is to line the pockets of Apple execs. But this isn't pure profit for Apple. Apple develops feature and security updates which they make available for free (at the point of use) for years to their hardware customers. The significant hardware markup is what enables this! Contrast this to companies that sell hardware at cost. You find phones and laptops crammed with programs to collect and monetize your data, and zero security or driver updates. A company that charges full price up front is at least in a position to afford to be able to do the right thing by users.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  Yeah, everyone points out that "if its free, you are the product" then Google and Microsoft do all kinds of shitty stuff due to their products being cheap/free, then people scream about Apple's hardware markups.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    Apple does plenty of data collection too though I believe they keep most the data internal. "If it's free, you are the product" sure, but that doesn't imply that if it's not free, you are not the product.
- Joeri 3y ago
  You mean do the right thing by shareholders. Apple spends on the order of a 100 billion a year lining shareholder pockets through buybacks and dividends. That is three times what they spend on r&d. This company is making obscene amounts of profit only to hand most of it over to people whose contribution to apple’s success is zero, instead of spending it on improving the products or customers actually responsible for that success. If this isn’t a condemnation of what’s wrong with capitalism, I don’t know what is. Tim Cook may have no other choice, but it is despicable that he doesn’t.
  - pas 3y ago
    if the market (competition) is not forcing them, why would they spend all that on R&D? the lack of (competent) competition is what's the problem, not that that there's return on capital. I don't like Apple, but I hardly can blame them, when they can make all this money by simply being the least shit generally okay-ish option.
dahart 3y ago
Good luck! People have been trying to shame Apple for their premium pricing since the day they started selling computers, and it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. I think the issue is that a lot of tech people don’t fully understand what Apple is selling, what value is there, and why it appeals to so many consumers, despite whatever reasons we think we have. Nobody needs to prove you wrong, because most consumers do not know and do not care what germanium and plan9 are. Most consumers do not want to mod their phone or plug it into a keyboard & mouse, heck most programmers don’t even want that. Framing it as greed and lack of innovation seems like a not well thought out argument. Which companies are you buying tech from that aren’t aiming for a profit, and wouldn’t change more if they could? As a dev I feel like I’ve been forced out of the Apple ecosystem, and I’m having a hard time being a fan these days, but I wouldn’t dare claim they’re not innovating. The M-series is a massive innovation and challenging everyone, and it follows behind literally world-changing innovations like iphone. For its time, OSX was an innovative successor to unix built on unix. They have a long list and a solid history of innovation that continues to this day, despite always having had seemingly high prices on RAM, so let’s look for a better argument why they should offer it for less.
- rudolph9 3y ago
  I think the shame is more around calling it a “MacBook PRO” and getting people to pay premium for something that is clearly not to their own high standards and carefully curated image for the “PRO” line of a product. It’s like in the 90s when the base ford mustang became a poorly made vehicle with little power that looked like a sports car but really they selling out and taking advantage of their customers. I would have more respect for Apple if they just charged $200 more for the base and put 16GB of ram it instead passing off machines with insufficient amount of ram as a premium model of their devices.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  > ... it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. Look up their Mac sales figure - it's down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs. The Gaslighting is also high with Apple claiming that their "8GB equals 16GB" because they are Apple: > Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. - https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/08/8gb-ram-m3-macbook-pro-like-16-gb-pc/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/08/8gb-ram-m3-macbook-pro-...
JeremyNT 3y ago
> I think the best reaction would be shame. Just a big round of shame for a trillion dollar company being so greedy to cripple their top equipment. You're not going to shame a company into changing how it does market segmentation. They do this because it makes them more money, and if you don't like padding their profit margins your best reaction would be to simply not buy their products. There are plenty of other PC vendors out there.
xw3090 3y ago
It seems in 2004 the web was much more indignant on Apple memory prices. Let's pick up the pace people! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=apple%20memory%20price&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=a...

by ianai 3y ago

runjake 3y ago

> Tech’s stagnated for over a decade I don’t know where to begin with this, but on topic, the M1 came out in 2020 and was a big tech leap in how PCs are done. Sure, all the individual technologies within existed elsewhere first. But Apple executed and delivered great products.

ianai 3y ago
Sure. Running an OS that is carrying a lot of legacy OS X with introduced bugs and cruft. I love *nix and hope to keep using it for a long time more. But if you plunked 2002 me into modern day, apple’s offerings would be pretty cool but not what I’d expect after 2 decades. You could buy a desktop with 4 gigs of ram in 2010.
- ianai 3y ago
  They could get me to shut up for probably 4 years if they cemented a deal to produce the next Nintendo console with Nintendo in a way Nintendo would be fully onboard with delivering. Think steam deck or mac mini level of hardware/cost.
- jsbisviewtiful 3y ago
  Most of your comments in this thread read like you are completely unaware of the tech and manufacturing leaps we've already passed and are currently trying to pass. You are allowed to complain if you want to, but your complaints are unsubstantiated. Signalling we haven't made significant and or substantial advances since 2002 is a joke - especially if your barometer is buying RAM. There's always research ongoing to improve tech and a lot of it is on the market already, but just because researchers figured something out doesn't mean it's feasible on a large manufacturing scale or that thermodynamics will even allow it to work well. Comparing devices in 2002 to 2023 and not noticing the drastic improvements just shows a lack of understanding and or signs of living in complete denial to just complain.
- appplication 3y ago
  I bought my windows laptop with 8g of ram in 2009. It was nicer but certainly not top of the line. If I recall, I think the minimum you’d find at that time would be 4g, and some configurations offered 16g.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
What was the leap though? Pay huge sums for the best TSMC node and put as much as possible on package? Own the whole stack?
- x0x0 3y ago
  I don't know what the leap was, just the effect: a combination of perf and battery life that puts everything else to shame.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  Marketing. It was a huge marketing leap for Apple to take credit for TSMC's node upgrades and claim it as some sort of great technological leap. Given that the next generation Snapdragon offers comparable performance to Apple's M line, it appears that node advances were responsible for a very large percentage of any performance gains.
  - musicale 3y ago
    Yeah, probably had nothing to do with Qualcomm acquiring Nuvia, etc.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
M1 was not that big of a leap for trillion dollar company. If you looked in A12 bionic or other processor from Apple before M1, M1 wasn't that different in IPC/core or any metric. Also Apple was 2 generation in semiconductor process ahead due to TSMC contracts. If you look closely, yes apple is bit better in manufacturing, bit better in materials etc. and I have many apple products, but its products isn't that different from many small companies. Unlike say Google, whose software engineering and scale they can handle for complex services is almost impossible to match for small companies.
- runjake 3y ago
  It's entirely subjective and I'm going to disagree. I ran an A12Z Developer Transition Kit and then immediately upgraded to an M1 Mini and the raw performance was staggeringly faster. My followup question: if it's so easy and unimpressive, why aren't other companies doing it -- especially at similar performance-per-watt? The market is obviously there and they release "answers" to Apple Silicon that aren't really answers (again, perf-per-watt isn't there).
- bluesign 3y ago
  This discussion is a bit like the dropbox/rsync comment, M1 was a huge leap for the users, I am yet to see anyone upgrading to M1 and not amazed around me. It was a technological huge leap or not is not the important part here in my opinion.
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Dropbox/rsync thread is so hyped here and most people haven't read it[1]. Firstly most comments were positive. Also the top comment poster who was negative first became positive later after explaination. Top commenter said "You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece of functionality for Windows users". Second commenter said "This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it". Also you missed the point of thread. I said I like Apple products. It's just that the stage they are in, they aren't trying to solve really tough problems which very likely will just loose money like say google does with quantum computing or AI. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
beAbU 3y ago
There was a time in the late 90s and early aughts when by the time you've unboxed your new computer it's already out of date. I'm sure it was even more so in the 80's into the 90's, but that's a little before my time. We have not really had a quantum leap in the last 20 years. Even longer. Apple's M-series chips are the closest we've gotten in recent times I think.
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks But it was obsolete before I opened the box You say you've had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos?si=kbkY4H6nepvB7I0o https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos?si=kbkY4H6nepvB7I0o
  - beAbU 3y ago
    I don't even need to click the link. Weird Al' is speaking the truth here!

icapybara 3y ago

Innovation for the sake of innovation doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A CPU on germanium? Why? The semiconductor industry thought about it decided silicon was a better material platform 50 years ago.

ianai 3y ago
“The semiconductor industry thought about it decided silicon was a better material platform 50 years ago.” Because we’re stuck at a handful of cores and around 3ghz clock on silicon.
- hellotomyrars 3y ago
  We are? I must not know how to count because those are not the numbers I have. What year is it where you are?
EvgeniyZh 3y ago
The decision was kind of arbitrary though, and now economy of scale makes it very hard to switch. For instance, GaAs is better semiconductor than silicone in many aspects, and probably somewhat better overall for chips, but switching to it would cost billions

spaceman_2020 3y ago

I’m in the market for a new Macbook. Should I get the M2 instead of the M3? The base M2 had 16GB RAM

ianai 3y ago
Honestly hold off until next year if you can or when they announce the M4. Otherwise probably get whatever you can afford to upgrade the RAM.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Or just wait until the year after for the M5.
  - ianai 3y ago
    Point being the jump from intel to M1 was much bigger than the jump from M1 to M3.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      We don't know what they're upgrading from, they could have an M1 already. If they do have an Intel machine, then yes, they should ideally buy an M1 rather than spending more for M2 or M3 which don't really seem to be that large of a jump but for a proportionally higher cost.
  - gizajob 3y ago
    I hear that the M6 is likely to be the most powerful chip they’ve ever produced.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
I replaced an M1 Pro with an M2 Air and have had nothing but improvements in my daily computing. Juggling Xcode, terminal tools, web browsers, Slack, Discord, music/podcasts, video streaming, video CALLS, all the background sync, email, VS Code, occasionally photoshop for flavor. It just doesn't slow down, at all, at any point. The M series SOCs are just fucking absurd. In every space besides gaming and graphics, they utterly lap PC's. I don't even remember the last time my Macbook wasn't charged enough to use, and I use it away from my desk quite a lot. Moving from my office PC to a Macbook has felt like being flung 6 years into the future.

elevation 3y ago

> The company is the problem here The author feigns indignance at Apple's margins, as if the only possible purpose for that markup is to line the pockets of Apple execs. But this isn't pure profit for Apple. Apple develops feature and security updates which they make available for free (at the point of use) for years to their hardware customers. The significant hardware markup is what enables this! Contrast this to companies that sell hardware at cost. You find phones and laptops crammed with programs to collect and monetize your data, and zero security or driver updates. A company that charges full price up front is at least in a position to afford to be able to do the right thing by users.

lamontcg 3y ago
Yeah, everyone points out that "if its free, you are the product" then Google and Microsoft do all kinds of shitty stuff due to their products being cheap/free, then people scream about Apple's hardware markups.
- kelipso 3y ago
  Apple does plenty of data collection too though I believe they keep most the data internal. "If it's free, you are the product" sure, but that doesn't imply that if it's not free, you are not the product.
Joeri 3y ago
You mean do the right thing by shareholders. Apple spends on the order of a 100 billion a year lining shareholder pockets through buybacks and dividends. That is three times what they spend on r&d. This company is making obscene amounts of profit only to hand most of it over to people whose contribution to apple’s success is zero, instead of spending it on improving the products or customers actually responsible for that success. If this isn’t a condemnation of what’s wrong with capitalism, I don’t know what is. Tim Cook may have no other choice, but it is despicable that he doesn’t.
- pas 3y ago
  if the market (competition) is not forcing them, why would they spend all that on R&D? the lack of (competent) competition is what's the problem, not that that there's return on capital. I don't like Apple, but I hardly can blame them, when they can make all this money by simply being the least shit generally okay-ish option.

dahart 3y ago

Good luck! People have been trying to shame Apple for their premium pricing since the day they started selling computers, and it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. I think the issue is that a lot of tech people don’t fully understand what Apple is selling, what value is there, and why it appeals to so many consumers, despite whatever reasons we think we have. Nobody needs to prove you wrong, because most consumers do not know and do not care what germanium and plan9 are. Most consumers do not want to mod their phone or plug it into a keyboard & mouse, heck most programmers don’t even want that. Framing it as greed and lack of innovation seems like a not well thought out argument. Which companies are you buying tech from that aren’t aiming for a profit, and wouldn’t change more if they could? As a dev I feel like I’ve been forced out of the Apple ecosystem, and I’m having a hard time being a fan these days, but I wouldn’t dare claim they’re not innovating. The M-series is a massive innovation and challenging everyone, and it follows behind literally world-changing innovations like iphone. For its time, OSX was an innovative successor to unix built on unix. They have a long list and a solid history of innovation that continues to this day, despite always having had seemingly high prices on RAM, so let’s look for a better argument why they should offer it for less.

rudolph9 3y ago
I think the shame is more around calling it a “MacBook PRO” and getting people to pay premium for something that is clearly not to their own high standards and carefully curated image for the “PRO” line of a product. It’s like in the 90s when the base ford mustang became a poorly made vehicle with little power that looked like a sports car but really they selling out and taking advantage of their customers. I would have more respect for Apple if they just charged $200 more for the base and put 16GB of ram it instead passing off machines with insufficient amount of ram as a premium model of their devices.
webmobdev 3y ago
> ... it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. Look up their Mac sales figure - it's down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs. The Gaslighting is also high with Apple claiming that their "8GB equals 16GB" because they are Apple: > Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. - https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/08/8gb-ram-m3-macbook-pro-like-16-gb-pc/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/08/8gb-ram-m3-macbook-pro-...

JeremyNT 3y ago

> I think the best reaction would be shame. Just a big round of shame for a trillion dollar company being so greedy to cripple their top equipment. You're not going to shame a company into changing how it does market segmentation. They do this because it makes them more money, and if you don't like padding their profit margins your best reaction would be to simply not buy their products. There are plenty of other PC vendors out there.

xw3090 3y ago

It seems in 2004 the web was much more indignant on Apple memory prices. Let's pick up the pace people! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=apple%20memory%20price&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=a...