The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3 • Hacker News Board

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#41

Post by frankjr » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

mlacks wrote: post #24

mdgrech23 wrote: post #5

These 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

I don't know either. macOS is pretty much the single reason why our team and I are staying on the Apple ship while crying over other laptops that cost half as much and yet provide superior performance.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#42

Post by Ididntdothis » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #39

Ididntdothis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that. However, running my configuration on an 8GB machine is horribly slow.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#43

Post by uaas » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

somerandomanon wrote: post #2

Show me Motion 5 and FCPX for Windows and I'll gladly switch.

You should try davinci resolve. It has a free version, and even runs on linux.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#44

Post by qzw » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

PaulWaldman wrote: post #9

This image on Acer's Swift product page really answered the question for me. https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Ove...

Those have to be (part) owners of Acer Inc.

On a separate note, the Swift 3 is $49 cheaper than the Mac Pro wheels.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#45

Post by tornato7 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #16

The macbook pro is not competing with the Acer swift. A lot fo people buy for the OS, which Acer doesn't have, and the brand/build quality, which acer doesnt have. For a lot of people, the benchmarks might be among the last thing they care about. The laptops the acer swift 3 should terrify are other 700 dollar windows laptops without the ryzen and as well as any highly premium windows laptops with customers that pay…

Not only that, but not as many Mac users are gaming on their laptop, which is a strong reason to need good benchmarks. If I'm buying a laptop it's really the user experience and battery life that I care about. Any CPU heavy tasks I can do on my desktop computer or an EC2 instance.

By the way, I assume this article is partly about gaming because of the preview image, but I was unable to read it on mobile thanks to all the popups.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#46

Post by close04 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #23

It'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…

A title like this sells. I'd love to see the author answer why Acer themselves sell much more expensive Intel based laptops.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#47

Post by crystaln » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

Guess which computer will still be running strong in 5 years?

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#48

Post by dvtkrlbs » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #33

bArray wrote: post #23

It'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.

With with version Catalina OSX becoming more and more like IOS. More restricted system and it is a lot buggy than previous versions. Personally i dont think i will continue with macOS in my next laptop.

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#49

Post by kevindong » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #8

djsumdog wrote: post #3

The 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?

The killer is (lots of) Docker containers. My work MBP has 16 GB of RAM and at times I'm running a dozen Docker containers, 1-2 IDEs, a couple Chrome tabs, and Slack. I don't usually hit 16 GB, but I do go significantly past 8 GB.

This is for (very large) web app(s).

Re: The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3

#50

Post by sneak » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #23

It'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…

My biggest one is that Apple seems to have let the privacy ship sail away in current versions of macOS: even with Siri, Location Services, iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, App Analytics/reporting, Software Updates, ntp, and the App Store, all disabled, the thing still phones back home to Apple like mad. Little Snitch (with the disablement of built in Apple service whitelisting rules) is essential for basic operation of a private/secure blank macOS install (which is sad and frustrating after spending most of $6000 on a laptop).

I will probably remain on Apple hardware as long as their boot security can be disabled to boot other OSes (and Linux hackers continue to put in the work to support their weird T2-mediated NVMe flash) simply due to build quality, but should they go too far off the “can still boot and use normal, open source, auditable crypto software” track I’ll be forced to switch to something of lower quality like something from Purism.