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MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

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Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#961

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But the tax in the US at least where I’m at is 6 or 7%, not 20.

Yes, but that difference isn't Apple's fault, only the 5% they add on top. Every product you buy in Europe is more expensive because of the higher VAT.

Sorry I misread your comment. I thought you implied that there was a 5% tax difference between the US and Austria

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#962
post #784

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My daily driver is the "irreparable" 2012 MBP Retina. You may remember this machine as the one everybody bitched about because the RAM and SSD were soldered into the mainboard and weren't upgradeable or replaceable? Let's see, it's 2023, hmmmm, seems the machine is coming up on 11 years. IDK about you but I think 11 years is incredible longevity for a laptop. You know, it just might be that making the machine "irrepa…

My 2013 MBP is a car wreck. Screen broke at some point had to be replaced. The second battery is now so bad it won’t even turn on anymore when plugged in. I think Bluetooth is dead too. All USB ports are dead too - although that one was “my“ fault since I plugged in a broken cd Rom drive that apparently nuked the USB ports - didn’t think that was even possible. When on, the thing often had the fans blowing at full sp…

> I guess if u keep a laptop stationary at your desk and plugged in at all times, then it could last 11 years.

I've taken my MBP everywhere, criss-crossing the United States. I've connected it to many different presentation devices where I've been a speaker at conferences. I've connected to many different networks - including hard-wired ethernet. Not exactly stationary and kept on a desk. I can't even remember how many times it's been dropped while in my backpack - from table top heights. I think it has taken quite a bit of abuse.

> Although the very expensive 8gb of ram from back then is basically useless today.

Yes it is - and it has nothing to do with being soldered into the motherboard. It's too slow for today. I'm not going to take that RAM and install it on an M2 machine, for example - too slow. Honestly, on this point you're just whining.

Obviously we're swapping anecdotes, but you'll see there's a lot of people still running the 2012 MBP Retina machines. Those things were tanks! The other machine that also appears to be a tank is the 2015 MBP. Lots of people are still running those machines too. Maybe Apple has "on" years and "off" years? Wouldn't surprise me as many other manufacturers do.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#963

There's also a new Mac Mini, which I found A LOT MORE interesting, given that its keyboard or batteries won't break: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/01/apple-introduces-new-...

> given that its keyboard or batteries won't break There's just soldered RAM and storage that can break and can't be replaced (without Apple robbing you).

Ah yes, ram and flash storage, the things famously known for breaking in modern compute hardware

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#964
post #719

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I am as happy with my 13” M1 mbp 2020 as you with your. My only gripe is that the screen is too small and more importantly after two years I went from a stellar 21h battery life to 13h for lightweight work and it now also seems to drain on sleep. And it seems to lose charge quicker under load. The battery capacity is still reported as 91%of spec which does not explain this behaviour. I hope yours holds up better.

I recently noticed a decline in battery on my M1. It is ridiculous to complain about 10h battery life but the decline was noticeable. I fixed it by: 1) Turn off siri suggestions & privacy and all the app watching it does. System Settings -> Siri & Spotlight -> Siri Suggestions & Privacy. It turned it off for every app. 2) Turn off siri all together. System Settings -> Siri & Spotlight -> Ask Siri Toggle 3) Turn off S…

Thank you! I have turned off a lot of background helpers from apps I don't use anymore and removed some search result types. Docker was in the background helpers multiple times. Let's see how much this helps.

In activity monitor, I also saw that Steam and iStat Menus both hand an "impact" of 50 which made them the top 2, the next had an "impact" of 5.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#965

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I'm not sure I'd attribute that much to the CPU design though. On a typical laptop, CPU power consumption is <20% of the picture.

Well in that case: whether it’s the CPU, or the way CPU/GPU/RAM are tightly coupled on the SoC, or the 4Kish MiniLED screen (which never seems to be dim), or some sort magic glue between the battery cells… Apple is doing something spectacular, and other manufacturers need to figure out how to do it too.

I think the ChromeOS world has done a pretty good job of getting there. Yes, it's not quite as impressive as the Powerbooks, but they're able to get surprisingly close with a much smaller budget.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#966
post #684

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I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die. The power efficiency, sure, that's all engineering, but super close and fast memory right next to the CPU is only one step away from AMD's 3D v-cache that has (had) the 5800X3D beating out newer 7000 series AMD chips.

> I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die I'm not sure why this Apple marketing point gets repeated so often. The M2 has the same memory support as current Intel chips: 128-bit LPDDR5 6400. Mounting the memory on the same package as the CPU might have some engineering advantages compared to socketed RAM, but it doesnt make the (industry sta…

IMHO the biggest advantage is the RAM->GPU VRAM pipeline, or at least, that was my experience before - whatever you want to send to the VRAM, it has to be in RAM first, and you have to wait until it gets copied, before you can use that RAM again. With unified memory it should not be necessary anymore (you just mark that part as input for GPU). Same should sort-of apply for iGPUs but I'm not 100% sure.

And given that the whole MacOS is built around various GPU-accelerated frameworks, it kind-of matters a lot.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#967

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They do give some numbers vs M1s, but most people actually considering buying this will be coming from the Intel ones (no-one replaces their laptop every year) so it makes sense to labour those in the marketing material.

Traditionally Apple's marketing compared against the previous generation, not multiple generations old hardware. It seems tacky to me because the M2's competition isn't really 2019 Intel MBPs- it's laptops using modern Intel/AMD CPUs (the M2 may still be better than those, but if that's the case those are the benchmarks they should be giving us)

Apple is not particularly concerned with competition, it’s all about the upgrades. If you are still on Intel Mac, the numbers look great for an upgrade.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, M1 Air still kills it. I use one for app development, and the gains of Pro just aren't worth it. Plus it's superlight and fanless, and can easily drive 1440p screen at 165hz, so I don't even miss the high fps screen.

Not for me. The M1 Pros were on discount for $1499 not too long ago. The screen alone vs the air is worth a it, if you use a lot for reading.

Everyone has a different criteria - for me, the Pro just feels too heavy, I love how I almost don't know if I have the air in the backpack.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#969

The biggest issue I have with macbooks is that they are ridiculously expensive. They are intended to be portable devices but bringing them anywhere outside my apartment or office is just a huge risk.

I paid $2,869.00 + $269 for a 2015 MBP 2.8GHz/1TB/16GB/Radeon R9 M370X in Nov 2015. It's still going strong and does everything I need it to do, though as of a few months ago Apple finally dropped support for their latest version of macOS Ventura.

This comes out to $440/year.

I could probably sell it on eBay for $3-400 (actual recent sales data), bringing that cost down to What are you comparing it to cost-wise?

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#970

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USB4 supports DP 1.4a tunneling and DP 2.0 in DP "alternate mode". Agree with you, but I fear dedicated DP ports are dying.

I guess my main point is that, if we're going to move to displayport over USB-C, we (A) need Apple to put out official $100 cables, since I tried some cheap Amazon cables that didn't work and had to purchase some $60 moshi cables that I knew would work[0], and (B) they need a minimum of 5 ports since being limited to 1 peripheral port+3 monitors (2 over DP, one HDMI) on the mini is terrible. I know they want your mou…

If you're the sort of person who needs 3 monitors on their Mini, I'm sure you can afford a Thunderbolt dock.

Four TB4 ports is plenty for 99% of people.

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