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The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
31–40 of 92 posts
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#32The Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its Linux support. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd probably get one.
This is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
I've been lately working with a lot of F# (thus its compiler and Rider IDE) and my take on “more powerful machines for development” is that it's quality of life improvement. When intellisense (or whatever it's called in different circles) works instantly, as well as go to definition, find usages, etc: it's just so much better than waiting even a second for those actions.
There's another side in need of compiling large projects regularly, which I didn't encounter much, but if my newest MBP with i9 took around 20 minutes to compile haskell-ide-engine, I imagine what compile times you can hit potentially in bigger projects and how unbearable it could be on any less powerful machines.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#33It's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000 dollars better and built well enough to overcome the fact it's slower (in these tests)? There are some pretty legitimate reasons to come away from Apple products now in my opinion, including some very competitive hardware at lower prices. I've been quite a happy Linux…
Not only are they better built, they also run macOS.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#34These posts are obnoxious. People don't buy Macs b/c of their impressive tech specs - they buy them b/c of macOS.
I don't know why you're being downvoted; this is true for a number of reasons. 1. Used to mac only software or workflow 2. ercieved supramacy in security 3. Ios compatibility 4. etc The price/ hardware spec ratio by and large always goes to Windows boxes, but for many people the change in OS disrupts too many other areas in life to justify the discount
Might want to put UNIX as one of those top level points.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#35This image on Acer's Swift product page really answered the question for me. https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Ove...
That is hilarious.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#36I think instead of drawing any unnecessary conclusions about MacBooks or this particular Acer laptop, it simply shows just how much ground AMD has gained in comparison to Intel. This performance is just impressive, not just at this price point, and as far as I’m aware AMD chips are now beating Intel chips across the entire CPU lineup
I wonder how many AMD equipped Macs are there in Apple’s lab and how they perform. I know there are hackintosh out there too but Apple please do some validations and let there be choices.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#37The Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its Linux support. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd probably get one.
This is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
I do all my work off a MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM. It can get a little tight if I have more than a few dozen browser windows open while also working in Xcode but usually it’s not bad for most of my work. Maybe I’ll grab a 16 GB model when I upgrade in a few years.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
The kind that requires you to collaborate on Slack.
Slack works fairly well in the browser, if you have one that’s not a resource hog.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
I routinely run several VMs and my next laptop soon will be 32 or 64GB. On Windows my dev machine already uses 8GB with just a few browser tabs open.
“Uses 8 GB” doesn’t mean you can’t do more with it; your computer is just “using“ the RAM because it’s there.
Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
#40It's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000 dollars better and built well enough to overcome the fact it's slower (in these tests)? There are some pretty legitimate reasons to come away from Apple products now in my opinion, including some very competitive hardware at lower prices. I've been quite a happy Linux…
Not only are they better built, they also run macOS.
I upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 16”. I heard there were tons of keyboard issues in the years in between. Aside from that, I stick with MacBooks because of the solid quality and macOS. I can’t work on Windows. I’ve tried again and again. I do have a windows machine for gaming, but programming and design work, the short cuts, fluidity, and general experience working in iTerm2 with multiple desktops is top notch. There’s nothing really to “fix” or make better. All my software on macOS is also top quality. I don’t know of a replacement for Omnigraffle or Omnifocus.
I had a recent fun project where I needed to install Python and a bunch of Python tooling and libraries (Jupyter, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, etc). Setting PATH on Windows is one of the most bizarre things. And even then I could not get everything to work. There were weird version conflicts, and this was all trying to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows which was insanely slow.
Why can’t I just update one file on my file system from a text editor to update path configuration?