4 ms·

Does Apple not usually have the best performance / price? Looking at M- and A- series chip benchmarks, Apple is way ahead of the competition.

Fatnino 3y ago
Apple prices are also way above the competition so they hamstring themselves somewhat.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Apple prices are comparable to the competition for comparable gear. If you don't want to spend much money, PC vendors will happily sell you garbage -- Apple won't.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    For the same money I can get a better machine that what Apple will sell me. Admittedly this calculus may have shifted in Apple's favor a bit when they rolled out their own silicon.
    - dijit 3y ago
      This is a myth, only supported by looking at nothing but spec sheets. I admit, I was one of these people, but when you look at incidentals (ironically the DAC such as this thread, but also things like keyboard, calibrated display, the nebulous concept of “build quality”) Apple is comparable in price to contemporaries. The issue is that Apple computers are built like higher end business laptops, and people dont typically buy those: they look at the spec sheet and try to buy the best bang for the buck which makes all of the quality run out the door. Apples lowest end machines generally are priced cheaper than equivalent machines, but Apple price segments (read: gouges) on upgrades. A high end Macbook pro 14” and a Dell XPS (55xx) are comparable in price.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    I've had an Apple device from work until ~2 years ago. It laid on my desk most of the time, not even in use so wear and tear are at a minimum. A region of the touchscreen broke around the same time as the charging brick stopped charging (2-3 years after purchase; the brick was only plugged in when in use), the keyboard didn't support swyping or having a number row or any symbols on its face whatsoever, the browser is ancient and gives me headaches as a developer constantly (and you can't even tell users to install a proper browser - remind me, what did the EC think of that when Microsoft pulled this with MSIE?), the idle battery life was worse than an eight year old Samsung I've got, of course it needed a custom cable, it kept turning on things I had turned off such as Bluetooth (see the recent Bluetooth attack), and my device was the only one that had hard-to-reproduce issues with Wireguard VPN. (I never had a charger or touchscreen break on me before, nor a battery wear so fast, so combined with the unusually low use, I'm pretty sure it's not my particular usage pattern that caused them to break way before due.) Credits where they're due, though: it had a headphone jack and I loved the earphones that came with it! But what a piece of trash otherwise. I'm sure there's good apple phones out there and our resident apple fanboy assured me I had an outlier, but I can attest that apple does in fact sell you garbage and not all the issues are hardware
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
alright2565 3y ago
Apple does not generally have the best performance / price: if we use passmark benchmarks[1], the 16-core M3 Max gets 10CPUMark/$, while the ASUS ROG Strix G17 gets 25CPUMark/$. If we look at the low-end, it is much worse: the cheapest Macbook Pro ($1600) gets 12CPUMark/$, while the Dell Inspiron 15 3535 ($420) gets 45CPUMark/$. I know there's much more to laptops than their CPUs, but I think my point is still valid. [1]: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html#cpumark https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html#cpumark
- standeven 3y ago
  Yeah, we’d have to include display quality, battery life, etc. to get a really fair comparison.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Okay, go ahead. What does a good display cost? How many Joules per megaflop does the CPU draw from the battery? The claim is a bit baseless as-is; you seem to know the answer already but how?

Fatnino 3y ago

Apple prices are also way above the competition so they hamstring themselves somewhat.

bitwize 3y ago
Apple prices are comparable to the competition for comparable gear. If you don't want to spend much money, PC vendors will happily sell you garbage -- Apple won't.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  For the same money I can get a better machine that what Apple will sell me. Admittedly this calculus may have shifted in Apple's favor a bit when they rolled out their own silicon.
  - dijit 3y ago
    This is a myth, only supported by looking at nothing but spec sheets. I admit, I was one of these people, but when you look at incidentals (ironically the DAC such as this thread, but also things like keyboard, calibrated display, the nebulous concept of “build quality”) Apple is comparable in price to contemporaries. The issue is that Apple computers are built like higher end business laptops, and people dont typically buy those: they look at the spec sheet and try to buy the best bang for the buck which makes all of the quality run out the door. Apples lowest end machines generally are priced cheaper than equivalent machines, but Apple price segments (read: gouges) on upgrades. A high end Macbook pro 14” and a Dell XPS (55xx) are comparable in price.
- Aachen 3y ago
  I've had an Apple device from work until ~2 years ago. It laid on my desk most of the time, not even in use so wear and tear are at a minimum. A region of the touchscreen broke around the same time as the charging brick stopped charging (2-3 years after purchase; the brick was only plugged in when in use), the keyboard didn't support swyping or having a number row or any symbols on its face whatsoever, the browser is ancient and gives me headaches as a developer constantly (and you can't even tell users to install a proper browser - remind me, what did the EC think of that when Microsoft pulled this with MSIE?), the idle battery life was worse than an eight year old Samsung I've got, of course it needed a custom cable, it kept turning on things I had turned off such as Bluetooth (see the recent Bluetooth attack), and my device was the only one that had hard-to-reproduce issues with Wireguard VPN. (I never had a charger or touchscreen break on me before, nor a battery wear so fast, so combined with the unusually low use, I'm pretty sure it's not my particular usage pattern that caused them to break way before due.) Credits where they're due, though: it had a headphone jack and I loved the earphones that came with it! But what a piece of trash otherwise. I'm sure there's good apple phones out there and our resident apple fanboy assured me I had an outlier, but I can attest that apple does in fact sell you garbage and not all the issues are hardware
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

alright2565 3y ago

Apple does not generally have the best performance / price: if we use passmark benchmarks[1], the 16-core M3 Max gets 10CPUMark/$, while the ASUS ROG Strix G17 gets 25CPUMark/$. If we look at the low-end, it is much worse: the cheapest Macbook Pro ($1600) gets 12CPUMark/$, while the Dell Inspiron 15 3535 ($420) gets 45CPUMark/$. I know there's much more to laptops than their CPUs, but I think my point is still valid. [1]: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html#cpumark https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html#cpumark

standeven 3y ago
Yeah, we’d have to include display quality, battery life, etc. to get a really fair comparison.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Okay, go ahead. What does a good display cost? How many Joules per megaflop does the CPU draw from the battery? The claim is a bit baseless as-is; you seem to know the answer already but how?