3 ms·

Mac mini killer it is not

Rinzler89 2y ago
Where did they claim it is? It's the only reasonably powerful ARM dev PC that's not an Apple, take it as such. Average Dell and Lenovos are also no MacBook "killers" yet they still sell and see them virtually everywhere. You can make money without "killing" Apple. The market's big enough for several players.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
It's a specialized developer tool, not a consumer product. It's literally named the "Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows". Nobody thinks it's attempting to compete with the Mac Mini.
- qwytw 2y ago
  But it still seems to be pretty competitive? Better specs for a significantly lower price $1,200 vs $900.
- mrbungie 2y ago
  They should totally try to eventually compete with the Mac Mini, even if only via a clear product/vision roadmap. No one is going to develop for a dead platform.
jeswin 2y ago
Depends on who it is for; I'd buy it once Linux support improves. A comparable Mac mini is $1000-1500.
- qwytw 2y ago
  Just the 24GB of memory (which is still less) is almost half the price of the Qualcomm dev kit, as long as the CPU is close enough it seems like a much better deal if you don't need MacOS (Linux support will probably be much better than Asahi when it comes out).
zamalek 2y ago
Why not? It is allegedly faster than the m3 with better battery life (but worse thermals). [1] [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/2313991/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-chips-performance-battery-efficiency-apple-m3.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2313991/qualcomm-snapdragon...
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Thermal output is where all the watts you pump into the CPU come back out. You can't have more thermal output from less wattage input or vice versa. I believe the multi core performance claim in that the base M3 has 4+4 cores while the X Elite has 12. After that everything falls in line as "a much faster Qualcomm offering than before that's still a bit behind the competition". If it had released 2 CPU generations ago when they started talking about how fast it was it would have been more impressive. I also believe the battery life claim in that if you put the laptop in airplane mode, then the screen all the way down, and run a video on loop it is fully possible it does this longer than Apple depending on how efficient the video decoder and ability to turn the rest off are. When it comes to actually using the laptop it'll be interesting what third party benchmarks say.
  - vsuperpower2020 2y ago
    Nobody is measuring "total thermal output". That would dumb, because like you said that just corresponds 1:1 to battery usage. They're measuring how hot the device gets and how good it is at moving heat away from the critical parts of the device.

Where did they claim it is? It's the only reasonably powerful ARM dev PC that's not an Apple, take it as such. Average Dell and Lenovos are also no MacBook "killers" yet they still sell and see them virtually everywhere. You can make money without "killing" Apple. The market's big enough for several players.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

It's a specialized developer tool, not a consumer product. It's literally named the "Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows". Nobody thinks it's attempting to compete with the Mac Mini.

qwytw 2y ago
But it still seems to be pretty competitive? Better specs for a significantly lower price $1,200 vs $900.
mrbungie 2y ago
They should totally try to eventually compete with the Mac Mini, even if only via a clear product/vision roadmap. No one is going to develop for a dead platform.

jeswin 2y ago

Depends on who it is for; I'd buy it once Linux support improves. A comparable Mac mini is $1000-1500.

qwytw 2y ago
Just the 24GB of memory (which is still less) is almost half the price of the Qualcomm dev kit, as long as the CPU is close enough it seems like a much better deal if you don't need MacOS (Linux support will probably be much better than Asahi when it comes out).

zamalek 2y ago

Why not? It is allegedly faster than the m3 with better battery life (but worse thermals). [1] [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/2313991/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-chips-performance-battery-efficiency-apple-m3.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2313991/qualcomm-snapdragon...

zamadatix 2y ago
Thermal output is where all the watts you pump into the CPU come back out. You can't have more thermal output from less wattage input or vice versa. I believe the multi core performance claim in that the base M3 has 4+4 cores while the X Elite has 12. After that everything falls in line as "a much faster Qualcomm offering than before that's still a bit behind the competition". If it had released 2 CPU generations ago when they started talking about how fast it was it would have been more impressive. I also believe the battery life claim in that if you put the laptop in airplane mode, then the screen all the way down, and run a video on loop it is fully possible it does this longer than Apple depending on how efficient the video decoder and ability to turn the rest off are. When it comes to actually using the laptop it'll be interesting what third party benchmarks say.
- vsuperpower2020 2y ago
  Nobody is measuring "total thermal output". That would dumb, because like you said that just corresponds 1:1 to battery usage. They're measuring how hot the device gets and how good it is at moving heat away from the critical parts of the device.