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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 bench

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.

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.