3 ms·

There's so much wrong here: * 12 big cores vs 4p+4e CPU * active vs passive cooling * Ignoring that M4 exists * completely avoids single-thread performance

by hajile 2y ago

There's so much wrong here: * 12 big cores vs 4p+4e CPU * active vs passive cooling * Ignoring that M4 exists * completely avoids single-thread performance even though that's what is most important to laptop users.

dotnet00 2y ago
Is ignoring M4's existence really 'wrong' given the fact that it isn't in macbooks yet? Are the benchmarks they mention possible on the iPad? Do the iPads benchmark similarly to the macbooks with the same chip? Does Apple also have to somehow properly benchmark against the not-yet-available highest end models of their competitor's chips for their numbers to not be wrong? It looks like it hasn't even been a month since the M4 was publicly announced, I think it's fair that that's just too soon for the benchmarks to make it into these early comparisons.
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  > Is ignoring M4's existence really 'wrong' given the fact that it isn't in macbooks yet? I don't think so, but it is a risky position to take. Presumably plans to publicly lean on that benchmark were in flight before the M4 was announced, so they went ahead with it anyway. I think it's risky because: assuming the M4 delivers the performance we'd expect from another Apple Silicon evolution - and releases in non-mobile devices this year - your marketing headline effectively becomes "hey, our best is only better than our competitor's last generation [and our competitors are already better]"
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    That's a risk they all take. AMD and NVIDIA (or Intel) have the same thing happen all the time, one of them has to go first, and usually there's not much of a gap between their announcements, and thus each risks being overshadowed by the other or sometimes even forcing them to cut prices or cancel a product as a result because the first one's announcement happens to make it completely pointless.
    - noirbot 2y ago
      The difficulty here is Microsoft is staking a fair bit on this. To some extent, their ability to make ARM their future is dependent on this push succeeding in getting people to swap to it. AMD/Intel can always just lose gracefully and go again next year. For Microsoft trying to decide how much they're investing in ARM, going all in on "we're better than the Macbook Air" when there's a good chance Apple is going to blow them out of the water in a few weeks is a much bigger gamble. It's possible Apple's announcements aren't that impressive in some dimension, but even if it's in the same range, it could really dampen Microsoft's push here.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    I think it's the opposite, something must have been wrong with M4 and Apple managed to spin exactly "our best is better than competitor's last generation" around the reality by releasing iPad early. We will probably see it with Apple either doing M4X for MacBooks, or not.
outcoldman 2y ago
I had a similar thought, maybe they should have compared it to MBP, but at the end user is looking at how they can spend their money in the best way possible. For $999 you can choose between MBA 8-Core/8GB/256Gb or Surface 10-Cores/16GB/256GB. It seems like Microsoft does have a better deal here. It is similar weight to MBA, similar size, better battery life, and seems like more performant. But there are numerous issues, that might be discovered later: 1. Similarly to the MBP because Surface will be more powerful than MBA, after you install all the default apps you need, and various Electron apps (like Slack) and updater like Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, will keep running in the background, you will never see 20 hours on the battery. This is the reason why I like MBA comparing to my MBP M2 Max, just because this chip cannot drain battery that fast. 2. Microsoft did a smart thing, announcing those laptops a few weeks before WWDC, but planning to ship them only after WWDC. So apple cannot play back and release M4 MBA on WWDC and show how much faster it can be comparing to Surface. Just because there is nothing to compare. 3. The quality of the Surface devices seems like it was always questionable. Anyway, I am really excited about ARM powered Windows laptops, for multiple reasons. At the end I hope to see Bootcamp again, maybe games will be optimized for ARMs, and we will be able to play games on MBP with Bootcamp :D
thefz 2y ago
Above all, > While I’ve covered Microsoft’s confidence in beating Apple’s M3 processor previously, I thought it would be useful to examine all of the benchmark Right! So... > I wasn’t able to run the benchmarks myself, CTRL-W

by hajile 2y ago

dotnet00 2y ago

Is ignoring M4's existence really 'wrong' given the fact that it isn't in macbooks yet? Are the benchmarks they mention possible on the iPad? Do the iPads benchmark similarly to the macbooks with the same chip? Does Apple also have to somehow properly benchmark against the not-yet-available highest end models of their competitor's chips for their numbers to not be wrong? It looks like it hasn't even been a month since the M4 was publicly announced, I think it's fair that that's just too soon for the benchmarks to make it into these early comparisons.

DavidPiper 2y ago
> Is ignoring M4's existence really 'wrong' given the fact that it isn't in macbooks yet? I don't think so, but it is a risky position to take. Presumably plans to publicly lean on that benchmark were in flight before the M4 was announced, so they went ahead with it anyway. I think it's risky because: assuming the M4 delivers the performance we'd expect from another Apple Silicon evolution - and releases in non-mobile devices this year - your marketing headline effectively becomes "hey, our best is only better than our competitor's last generation [and our competitors are already better]"
- dotnet00 2y ago
  That's a risk they all take. AMD and NVIDIA (or Intel) have the same thing happen all the time, one of them has to go first, and usually there's not much of a gap between their announcements, and thus each risks being overshadowed by the other or sometimes even forcing them to cut prices or cancel a product as a result because the first one's announcement happens to make it completely pointless.
  - noirbot 2y ago
    The difficulty here is Microsoft is staking a fair bit on this. To some extent, their ability to make ARM their future is dependent on this push succeeding in getting people to swap to it. AMD/Intel can always just lose gracefully and go again next year. For Microsoft trying to decide how much they're investing in ARM, going all in on "we're better than the Macbook Air" when there's a good chance Apple is going to blow them out of the water in a few weeks is a much bigger gamble. It's possible Apple's announcements aren't that impressive in some dimension, but even if it's in the same range, it could really dampen Microsoft's push here.
- numpad0 2y ago
  I think it's the opposite, something must have been wrong with M4 and Apple managed to spin exactly "our best is better than competitor's last generation" around the reality by releasing iPad early. We will probably see it with Apple either doing M4X for MacBooks, or not.

outcoldman 2y ago

I had a similar thought, maybe they should have compared it to MBP, but at the end user is looking at how they can spend their money in the best way possible. For $999 you can choose between MBA 8-Core/8GB/256Gb or Surface 10-Cores/16GB/256GB. It seems like Microsoft does have a better deal here. It is similar weight to MBA, similar size, better battery life, and seems like more performant. But there are numerous issues, that might be discovered later: 1. Similarly to the MBP because Surface will be more powerful than MBA, after you install all the default apps you need, and various Electron apps (like Slack) and updater like Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, will keep running in the background, you will never see 20 hours on the battery. This is the reason why I like MBA comparing to my MBP M2 Max, just because this chip cannot drain battery that fast. 2. Microsoft did a smart thing, announcing those laptops a few weeks before WWDC, but planning to ship them only after WWDC. So apple cannot play back and release M4 MBA on WWDC and show how much faster it can be comparing to Surface. Just because there is nothing to compare. 3. The quality of the Surface devices seems like it was always questionable. Anyway, I am really excited about ARM powered Windows laptops, for multiple reasons. At the end I hope to see Bootcamp again, maybe games will be optimized for ARMs, and we will be able to play games on MBP with Bootcamp :D

thefz 2y ago

Above all, > While I’ve covered Microsoft’s confidence in beating Apple’s M3 processor previously, I thought it would be useful to examine all of the benchmark Right! So... > I wasn’t able to run the benchmarks myself, CTRL-W