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I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at exploiting our human psychology.
by retskrad 3y ago
I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you believe that the smallest bump in improvements will make your older computer appear useless in comparison. That's why it's for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible.
- fh9302 3y agoThe difference is really obvious during code compilation or other tasks that can take advantage of all cores.
- geerlingguy 3y agoSpeaking only of the Air here: The newer laptop feels thicker, since it doesn't have the nice tapered front. In general use, outside of only one external display in clamshell mode, the M1 feels similar. If you push things, like for video editing or rendering, the M2 or M3 are markedly better. However, you quickly hit throttling if you push for more than a couple minutes at a time (like when you export in Handbrake, it will slow down and only run marginally faster than the M1, in my experience).
- bombcar 3y agoSomeone should sell a little app for Mac that glows red when an upgrade would have been useful (e.g, when you maxed out your max Mac). I suspect mine would be green almost all the time, even on this almost three year old M1 Max.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigfudge 3y agoThis is a cool idea, although presumably m3 would be faster even for single thread apps? Also, are there cases where memory bandwidth could leave cpu at less than 100% on m1 but still be faster on m3?
- pama 3y agoAn interesting difference with the new pro models, if you want to pay around $5k, is that you can have 128Gb unified Ram in them and run inference locally with exciting LLMs.
- gnicholas 3y agoI suspect LLM performance will be a differentiator for Pro and newer Apple laptops in coming years. If Apple releases on-device AI, this will be an effective way of getting people to upgrade like they used to, but haven't had to recently. For example, I bought Pro-level computers in my younger years, but now would only consider an MBA, mini, or iMac. But they could get me to go for a Pro if it were the only way to get more RAM for better AI performance. It will also likely shorten upgrade cycles since newer computers would have the latest and greatest performance. When I bought my M2 MBA years ago I suspected it would last me a long time. Now I'm not so sure since I don't have a ton of RAM.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago5k for a computer with 128gb doesn’t seem like a great deal. You can get that much ddr5 today for like $400 sometimes less than that on sale.
- theGnuMe 3y agoyeah but you can't get an nvidia gpu with at least 128gb (H200) for less than $40k
- addandsubtract 3y agoThe M2 and M3 are more evolutions of the M series. If you already have an M1 machine, there's no real need to upgrade. But if you don't, the M3 seems like a great device to get.
- pier25 3y agoDepends which chips you're comparing. Eg: The M3 Max is a substantial improvement over the M2 Max in both CPU and GPU. But the M3 Pro is a moderate improvement at best compared to the M2 Pro.
- JohnBooty 3y agoFor sure, capitalism requires a certain level of consumer savvy to remain sane. For most real-world users, the M3 really is about 30% faster in single-core and 100% faster in multicore. That is really significant for a lot of us, especially software engineers. But the really big speedups mentioned in Apple's marketing are more niche and it takes some savvy to recognize that. (I'm plenty content with my M1 Max for now and I expect I'll continue to happily use it for a few more years)
- pier25 3y agoMaybe you don't really need a Max chip?
- brigadier132 3y ago> I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro I don't know why you bought a new one. You can have two ways to look at this, one way is your ultra pessimistic view, my view is I don't need to upgrade my laptop ever 2 years anymore. Before the M1 Max I was upgrading so often because intel macbooks sucked so much. Now I can comfortably say I'm keeping my M1 Max for a decade. As for being "exploited" by ads, just don't be, stop mindless consumption...
- anneessens 3y ago'Just don't be exploited' by people who are literally paid to figure out how to exploit your psychological weaknesses?
- brigadier132 3y agoYes. They actually don't have control over you.
- lancesells 3y agoI'm on my first M1 but even with intel I got 5 to 6 years out of the Macbook Air.
- brigadier132 3y agoI'm compiling a lot of code, my hands got sweaty because of how hot the intel macbooks got.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoExternal keyboard and a laptop stand would have helped.
- brigadier132 3y agoat that point why am i using a laptop?
- ctxMatters 3y ago[dead]
- jmull 3y ago> That's why it's for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible. I wouldn't exactly just avoid them, though most are useless, so it's not a bad idea. You just want to understand what they are... even honest ones will only present information that is a reason to buy. E.g., when I saw the iPhone 15 ads and the best thing they could say about was that it had some titanium, I knew it was a product I could ignore. (Not that I have an iPhone 14 either, but I already knew that one wasn't worth an upgrade to me).
- princevegeta89 3y agoThe worst part about M3 is that they now have an 8GB Macbook Pro lineup. These "pro" machines have always been known for work and productivity, and 8GB just sounds like a piss poor product decision
- skadamat 3y agoThe WORST part is the 8GB Macbook Pro (base M3) doesn't support 2 external displays but this new Macbook Air (base M3) DOES. This is so confusing
- jhickok 3y ago8gb in a pro machine honestly wild. I guess it makes some sense if you consume content and you want a better screen and audio, but it still offends.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoIt doesn't make sense in any world, it only exists to be there so people get to into the checkout flow and throw a few hundred dollars to get it to a usable spec. It's pure ewaste that it exists.
- caycep 3y agoI feel like sometimes the bean counters win out too strongly at Apple...
- coolspot 3y agoM2 also has 8GB model, e.g. MNEH3LL
- ActorNightly 3y agoThe "pro" isn't for work or productivity, its for the appearance of work and productivity. Most people who buy Macs don't really understand what they are getting, developers included.
- whynotminot 3y ago> I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you believe that the smallest bump in improvements will make your older computer appear useless in comparison. That's why it's for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible. It's also why you should understand your personal use case and do research. I think this is on you, not Apple. Corpos gonna corpo -- you have to do the research to figure out whether the gains from new chips will actually impact your workflow.
- leo150 3y agoLet's put it this way. M1 Max can build some amount of code in 134 seconds. M3 Max can do it in 70 seconds. Does this sound like a small bump? Source: XcodeBenchmark
- xcv123 3y ago> I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro If you bought a M3 Max just to fuck around on Facebook and Hacker News then of course you won't notice a difference. If you are running workloads that actually require that level of performance then you will notice a significant difference. M3 Max is twice as fast at rendering 3D scenes in Cinebench.