Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#121

Post by carlmcqueen » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:19 PM UTC

I know it's my own niche case, but with apple silicone I have more issues with external monitors than I've ever had in my entire life. I run my own business and I've always liked Macs because having the same software as my team makes fixing issues so much quicker but this is the first time I've thought about moving us to PCs.

In my case, it is a start of the day, every single day, issue where I'm unplugging and re-plugging in monitors waiting for it to 'take' and then it's fine for the day.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#122

Post by wil421 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:19 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #55

izacus wrote: post #36

I was just buying a laptop for my family and the prices of MacBooks here in Europe are utterly crazy. The crappiest 8GB RAM (?!) 256SSD M2 Air model is 1650EUR. 1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. The 16GB model is rounded 2000EUR, which was before reserved for a high-end gaming laptops. It's bonkers.

>1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. That did not have enough ram 3 years ago... the fact they are still trying to sell 8GB as an useful amount outside of extremely budget laptops is insane.

I have friends who run small businesses and use Mac Air’s with 8gb and they don’t bat an eye. They run stuff like quick books and Microsoft office products.

One friend uses the Air for business only and an iPad Pro for personal/family use.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#123

Post by mgraupner » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #101

mgraupner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pro starts with 16 GB of RAM.

Which is equally dumb for a Pro as 8GB for a non-pro at this price .

It would be ok if the upgrades would not be so freakishly expensive. RAM is on an all-time low, still Apple wants 460€ !!! for 16 GB RAM more here in Europe.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#124

Post by vardump » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #69

KptMarchewa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. That did not have enough ram 3 years ago... the fact they are still trying to sell 8GB as an useful amount outside of extremely budget laptops is insane.

Speaking as someone who has and uses an M2 Macbook Air with 8GB RAM, I agree it's not a lot but it's more than sufficient for any use case a Macbook Air would generally see. This literally isn't Windows where 32GB of RAM is the new minimum. I will say the Macbook Pro really should start from 16GB RAM and at least 1TB SSD; it's for professionals, isn't it?

I'm typing this on a Macbook M2 max with 32 GB RAM.

Not all that much open and the memory usage is at 27 GB. Chrome, Teams etc. messaging apps, Xcode and other SW dev stuff.

Kinda regret I didn't go for 64 GB.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#125

Post by what-the-grump » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #107

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This literally isn't Windows where 32GB of RAM is the new minimum. That's BS. I ran Win 11 on a 8GB tablet PC just fine (although I wouldn't recommend it, get 16 instead). I get it, we all hate windows, but can we please stick to reality and stop spreading FUD on HN?

I actually like Windows, despite all its faults, and blame the wider Windows ecosystem (and especially Chrome) for demanding and wasting so much RAM. With that said, I can easily break past 16GB just running Windows and Chrome. 32GB is the new minimum if you want an enjoyable time; swapping into the page file even with PCIE4 and PCIE5 SSDs is still miserable.

Unless you plan to run Bloomberg and a full trading setup 16gb of ram in windows is heavy user spec.

Opening task manager and checking if windows is using more than 16gb is not a method to tell how much you should spec, my PC has 128gb ram with page file disabled and regularly sits at 40gb ram, because windows will allocate ram if there is ram to allocate.

I run 1000s of users on vdi 4/16 is more than enough for 99% of users.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#126

Post by Hamuko » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #113

Hamuko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base prices have also gone up. Base M1 MacBook Air was about 1100€ new and could even be found for pretty good discounts (I bought one new for 880€). But the base M2 MacBook Air is 1400€.

Is the M1 Air still being sold? It still is in the US. If so, at what price? That is the relevant figure to compare. In the US, M1 Air is 8GB/256GB for $1,000 and 16GB/512GB for $1,400. I think those are the same prices from original release. And so due to decreasing purchasing power of USD since 2020, they have gotten cheaper. Edit: yes, the M1 Air has the same nominal price as when it was released 2.5 years ago: ht…

Yeah, it's still being sold. A couple of sites have it discounted at 999€ with normal price of 1159€ on the rest.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#127

Post by re-thc » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

lakecresva wrote: post #109

re-thc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter what it costs Apple? The locksmith only takes ~5minutes to open a lock and yet...

Yes, the way consumers perceive your pricing matters. If you lose a key, you need to call a locksmith; it's rare that someone needs to buy a new apple laptop.

Is it rare? There are so many startups that come and go and they buy laptops (new) for employees...

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#128

Post by peoplefromibiza » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #69

KptMarchewa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. That did not have enough ram 3 years ago... the fact they are still trying to sell 8GB as an useful amount outside of extremely budget laptops is insane.

Speaking as someone who has and uses an M2 Macbook Air with 8GB RAM, I agree it's not a lot but it's more than sufficient for any use case a Macbook Air would generally see. This literally isn't Windows where 32GB of RAM is the new minimum. I will say the Macbook Pro really should start from 16GB RAM and at least 1TB SSD; it's for professionals, isn't it?

> This literally isn't Windows where 32GB of RAM is the new minimum.

I use both MacOS and Windows, both in a VM using Linux as the host OS, on a laptop with 64GB of RAM, and honestly Windows 11, not considering the fact that it tries to run ads on the start menu, feels lighter and snappier than MacOS.

Of course if you give it a lot of of RAM it will try to use as much as it can to aggressively cache stuff, but not differently from what MacOS does.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#129

Post by mrweasel » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

drooopy wrote: post #32

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm…

Some where someone wrote: It's not that Apples hardware isn't cost competitive, they just don't have en entry level option (or even a low mid-level option).

The cheapest MacBook Air, which is fine for most of my needs is €1260/$1370 and while it's a wonderful laptop, it's just a bit much for running Safari, VSCode and a terminal. It really is a €950 laptop, but if they could hit that price then what else would you really want to buy?

A major issue for me is that I wouldn't know what else to get. Given the current state of Windows, I'm not running out to get a Windows machine. Honestly, if the layout of my house was different, so I could get my desk closer to the living room and family, I'd go for a desktop running Linux next time around.

Other than that, I think Apple have the market cornered. You want a great laptop, with an OS that just works (for most people), then what else are you going to buy?

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#130

Post by reustle » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #79

izacus wrote: post #36

I was just buying a laptop for my family and the prices of MacBooks here in Europe are utterly crazy. The crappiest 8GB RAM (?!) 256SSD M2 Air model is 1650EUR. 1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. The 16GB model is rounded 2000EUR, which was before reserved for a high-end gaming laptops. It's bonkers.

Meanwhile a lenovo is 800 EUR for a 11th gen i5, 16GB RAM and a 3050ti. As someone with a value investing mindset, I personally can't find the extra value for double the money in macs.

> I personally can't find the extra value for double the money in macs

I'm sure the resale value is much, much higher. I purchased my very first iPhone, an iPhone 13 pro, largely due to the fact that it will still be worth a significant amount after 2 or 3 years.

If you take that into account, the difference probably isn't as noticeable.