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Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it ha
by izacus 3y ago
Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it half the power use in some scenarios (so we'll get like... 15% more battery life total) ?
- can16358p 3y agoApple is one of the few companies that underpromise and overdeliver and never exaggerate. Compared to the competition, I'd trust Apple much more than the Windows laptop OEMs.
- alphakappa 3y agoAny product that uses this is more than just the chip, so you cannot get a proportional change in battery life.
- izacus 3y agoSure, but I also remember them comparing M1 chip to 3090 GTX and my MacBook M1 Pro doesn't really run games well. So I've become really suspicious about any claims about performance done by Apple.
- servus45678981 3y agoThat is fault of the devs. Because optimization for dedicated graphic cards is a either integrated in the game engine or they just have a version for rtx users.
- filleduchaos 3y agoI mean, I remember Apple comparing the M1 Ultra to Nvidia's RTX 3090. While that chart was definitely putting a spin on things to say the least, and we can argue from now until tomorrow about whether power consumption should or should not be equalised, I have no idea why anyone would expect the M1 Pro (an explicitly much weaker chip) to perform anywhere near the same. Also what games are you trying to play on it? All my M-series Macbooks have run games more than well enough with reasonable settings (and that has a lot more to do with OS bugs and the constraints of the form factor than with just the chipset).
- achandlerwhite 3y agoThey compared them in terms of perf/watt, which did hold up, but obviously implied higher performance overall.
- seec 2y agoIt's not just games. There is in fact not a lot of stuff that Apple Silicon can run well. In theory you get great battery life, to use software nobody wants to use or to take longer to run stuff that is not running well. The problem is two-fold, first the marketing bullshit does not match the reality and second the Apple converted will lie without even thinking about it to justify the outrageous price. There are a lot of things I like about Apple hardware but the reality is that they can charge so much because there is a lot of mythology around their products and it just doesn't add up. Now if only they be bothered to actually make software great (and not simpleton copies of what already exists), there would be an actual valid reason to unequivocally recommend their stuff but they can't be bothered since they already make too much money as it is.
- illusive4080 3y agoFrom their specs page, battery life is unchanged. I think they donated the chip power savings to offset the increased consumption of the tandem OLED
- xattt 3y agoI’ve not seen discussion that Apple likely scales performance of chips to match the use profile of the specific device it’s used in. An M2 in an iPad Air is very likely not the same as an M2 in an MBP or Mac Studio.
- mananaysiempre 3y agoA Ryzen 7840U in a gaming handheld is not (configured) the same as a Ryzen 7840U in a laptop, for that matter, so Apple is hardly unique here.
- jakjak123 3y agoThe manufacturer often targets a tdp that is reasonable for thermals and battery life, but the cpu package is often the same.
- seec 3y agoYeah, but the difference is that you usually don't get people arguing that it's the same thing or that it can be performance competitive in the long run. When it comes to Apple stuff, people say some irrational stuff that is totally bonkers...
- refulgentis 3y agoSurprisingly, I think it is: I was going to comment that here, then checked Geekbench, single core scores match for M2 iPad/MacBook Pro/etc. at same clock speed. i.e. M2 "base" = M2 "base", but core count differs, and with the desktops/laptops, you get options for M2 Ultra Max SE bla bla.
- joakleaf 3y agoThe GeekBench [1,2] benchmarks for M2 are: Single Core: iPad Pro (M2): 2539 Macbook Air (M2): 2596 Macbook Pro (M2): 2645 Multi Core: iPad Pro (M2 8-core): 9631 Macbook Air (M2 8-core): 9654 Macbook Pro (M2 8-core): 9642 So, it appears to be almost the same performance (until it throttles due to heat, of course). 1. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks 2. https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
- aledalgrande 3y agoWell battery life would be used by other things too right? Especially by that double OLED screen. "best ever" in every keynote makes me laugh at this point, but it doesn't mean that they're not improving their power envelope.
- philistine 3y agoQuickly looking at the press release, it seems to have the same comparisons as in the video. None of Apple's comparisons today are between the M3 and M4. They are ALL comparing the M2 and M4. Why? It's frustrating, but today Apple replaced a product with an M2 with a product with an M4. Apple always compares product to product, never component to component when it comes to processors. So those specs are far more impressive than if we could have numbers between the M3 and M4.
- jorvi 3y agoDidn't they do extreme nitpicking for their tests so they could show the M1 beating a 3090 (or M2 a 4090, I can't remember). Gave me quite a laugh when Apple users started to claim they'd be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 maxed out with maxed out raytracing.
- philistine 3y agoI'll give you that Apple's comparisons are sometimes inscrutable. I vividly remember that one. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/17/22982915/apple-m1-ultra-rtx-3090-comparison-specs-charts-cpu-gpu-performance https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/17/22982915/apple-m1-ultra-r... Apple was comparing the power envelope (already a complicated concept) of their GPU against a 3090. Apple wanted to show that the peak of their GPU's performance was reached with a fraction of the power of a 3090. What was terrible was that Apple was cropping their chart at the point where the 3090 was pulling ahead in pure compute by throwing more watts at the problem. So their GPU was not as powerful as a 3090, but a quick glance at the chart would completely tell you otherwise. Ultimately we didn't see one of those charts today, just a mention about the GPU being 50% more efficient than the competition. I think those charts are beloved by Johny Srouji and no one else. They're not getting the message across.
- izacus 3y agoPlenty of people on HN thought that M1 GPU is as powerful as 3090 GPU, so I think the message worked very well for Apple. They really love those kind of comparisons - e.g. they also compared M1s against really old Intel CPUs to make the numbers look better, knowing that news headlines won't care for details.
- cletus 3y agoIME Apple has always been the most honest when it makes performance claims. LIke when they said an Macbook Air would last 10+ hours and third-party reviewers would get 8-9+ hours. All the while, Dell or HP would claim 19 hours and you'd be lucky to get 2 eg [1]. As for CPU power use, of course that doesn't translate into doubling battery life because there are other components. And yes, it seems the OLED display uses more power so, all in all, battery life seems to be about the same. I'm interested to see an M3 vs M4 performance comparison in the real world. IIRC the M3 was a questionable upgrade. Some things were better but some weren't. Overall the M-series SoCs have been an excellent product however. [1]: https://www.laptopmag.com/features/laptop-battery-life-claims-debunked https://www.laptopmag.com/features/laptop-battery-life-claim... EDIT: added link
- ajross 3y ago> IME Apple has always been the most honest when it makes performance claims That's just laughable, sorry. No one is particularly honest in marketing copy, but Apple is for sure one of the worst, historically. Even more so when you go back to the PPC days. I still remember Jobs on stage talking about how the G4 was the fasted CPU in the world when I knew damn well that it was half the speed of the P3 on my desk.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoIndeed. Have we already forgotten about the RDF?
- bagels 3y agoCPU is not the only way that power is consumed in a portable device. It is a large fraction, but you also have displays and radios.
- coldtea 3y agoApple might use simplified and opaque plots to drive their point, but they all too often undersell the differences. Indepedent reviews for example find that they not just hit the mark Apple mentions for things like battery but that often do slightly better...
- michaelmior 3y ago> is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) I'm not sure what you mean by "of all times" but half the battery usage of the processor definitely doesn't translate into double the battery life since the processor is not the only thing consuming power.
- smith7018 3y agoYou wouldn’t necessarily get twice the battery life. It could be less than that due to the thinner body causing more heat, a screen that utilizes more energy, etc
- mcv 3y agoI don't know, but the M3 MBP I got from work already gives the impression of using barely any power at all. I'm really impressed by Apple Silicon, and I'm seriously reconsidering my decision from years ago to never ever buy Apple again. Why doesn't everybody else use chips like these?
- jacurtis 3y agoI have an M3 for my personal laptop and an M2 for my work laptop. I get ~8 hours if I'm lucky on my work laptop, but I have attributed most of that battery loss to all the "protection" software they put on my work laptop that is always showing up under the "Apps Using Significant Power" category in the battery dropdown. I can have my laptop with nothing on screen, and the battery still points to TrendMicro and others as the cause of heavy battery drain while my laptop seemingly idles. I recently upgraded my personal laptop to the M3 MacBook pro and the difference is astonishing. I almost never use it plugged in because I genuinely get close to that 20 hour reported battery life. Last weekend I played a AAA Video Game through Xbox Cloud Gaming (awesome for mac gamers btw) and with essentially max graphics (rendered elsewhere and streamed to me of course), I got sucked into a game for like 5 hours and lost only 8% of my battery during that time, while playing a top tier video game! It really blew my mind. I also use GoLand IDE on there and have managed to get a full day of development done using only about 25-30% battery. So yeah, whatever Apple is doing, they are doing it right. Performance without all the spyware that your work gives you makes a huge difference too.
- bee_rider 3y agoFor the AAA video game example, I mean, it is interesting how far that kind of tech has come… but really that’s just video streaming (maybe slightly more difficult because latency matters?) from the point of view of the laptop, right? The quality of the graphics there have more-or-less nothing to do with the battery.
- mcv 3y agoOver the weekend, I accidentally left my work M3 unplugged with caffeinate running (so it doesn't sleep). It wasn't running anything particularly heavy, but still, on Monday, 80% charge left. That's mindblowing. Especially since my personal laptop is a Thinkpad X1 Extreme. I can't leave that unplugged at all.
- wwilim 3y agoIsn't 15% more battery life a huge improvement on a device already well known for long battery life?
- VelesDude 3y agoIf there is any dishonesty, I would wager it is a case of it can double the battery life in low power scenarios. Can go twice as long when doing word processing for instance. Can potentially idle a lot lower
- Petersipoi 3y ago> so we'll get double the battery life This is an absurd interpretation. Nobody hears that and says "they made the screen use half the energy".