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

pcworld.com

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

#51

Post by cowmoo728 »

JoeCianflone wrote: post #7

I love these articles because the writers are so earnest and seem to be oblivious to the fact that buyers do not care.

My sister, sister in law, and elderly parent all want new laptops this year. They are somewhat tech literate but not that interested in tech or computers. They asked me for advice on what to purchase and the only thing they cared about was which apple product was cheapest but still fast enough to use the programs they needed. Other platforms never even entered into the conversation.

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

#52

Post by bArray »

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.

> Not only are they better built

In this case, but there are plenty of examples of a sub-par performance from Apple. Broken keyboards, display cable issues, shipping with overheating CPU profiles, removing buttons, useless touch bar display, removal of ports - to name a few. As Rossman says: "the only part on a MacBook that doesn't blow are the fuses".

> they also run macOS

Again, not been a fan of their recent work. I can get a very macOS-esque experience in Linux. It's not always a seamless experience granted, but it's really quite acceptable.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by lnanek2 »

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?

At least on the mobile dev side, the only two platforms with enough users to matter are Apple and Google. I'm typing on a 64GB machine and Xcode takes 30 minutes to do a clean compile, and the CPU is pegged at 100% all day as it "indexes" - something it does afresh every build and never manages to finish. You can disable indexing, but then lose a lot of code assist and have to constantly lookup class names and method names instead of having them auto-complete.

Android Studio is worse. Sometimes when AS is locked up for one of its ten minute fits I'll kill it and fire it up in power saving mode which is usable, but then there's no code assist, or I'll just open up Sublime and bet on writing my code perfectly enough to compile without mistakes, which is a big time penalty.

Popular theory here is that Apple and Google have even more fancy work stations, so they don't write their IDEs to run reasonably on ours. So I'd consider 8GB to completely unusable as a mobile dev or a popular 100-200MB size app. You may be right about editors and compilers, but these are IDEs.

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

#56

Post by newhna »

tracer4201 wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. I don't know which fluidity you mean on a multi montior setup you lack on Windows. Re short-cuts Windows has more (just think of win+number or built in window management) or autohotkey which owns karabiner. MacOs is good if you need Xcode but other than that? Idk

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

#57

Post by zenlot »

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...

They dislike their Acers a lot and instead prefers time spent on phone or looking away through window.

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

#58

Post by murermader »

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?

For example, at my work, I create windows (WPF & WinForms) apps with Visual Studio. I usually have at least 2 instances of VS open, each using 1-2gb of ram. Combine that with Outlook, Slack and some more programs, and you are really feel everything slow down.

It's not that the system is unusable, it is just really slow, and that really hurts usability.

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

#59

Post by toast0 »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

How do the displays compare? Or the trackpad? How will the Acer hold up after two years of use? Raw speed is only one factor.

If the Acer needs replacing after two years, and the Mac after five, you're still ahead, asuming a similar speced Acer is available for a similar price in the future.
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