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

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

#141

Post by andrekandre »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74
pigsty wrote: post #30

The dollar is insanely strong right now and global Mac prices raised in accordance with that. In places that don’t use USD, prices shot up by tens of percent overnight while the US prices are the same as ever. Japan, for example, got a price increase of about 40% on all items. Unsurprisingly, sales declined.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

  > there is a possibility that US economic dominance is about to go into hyperdrive.
thats a very interesting perspective considering most talk is about a "looming" downturn/recession...

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

#142

Post by Dalewyn »

what-the-grump wrote: post #125
Dalewyn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

I was using a 16GB RAM Windows machine as a daily until last year, I upgraded that to 32GB because I was routinely capping out and thrashing the page file.

I've since upgraded from that machine to a new build with 64GB of RAM simply because so many programs demand too much RAM now, and I hate even the mere thought of hitting swap.

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

#143

Post by mgraupner »

wasyl wrote: post #132
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…

4 years ago I bought a maxed out (except storage) MBP 15" for ~3.5k EUR. A similarly specced machine now is 4.7k EUR, and a maxed out (except storage) one is 5.2k EUR. I'd really want to upgrade to a machine with M chip but with current prices I can't reasonably justify that. Instead, I got a PC with 8c/16t Ryzen with similar performance in my workload for fraction of the price, and simply use the MBP only when neede…

For 3600€ you could get the M2 Pro 16" with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD which is a much faster machine than the on you bought 4 years ago, even if the specs might not have changed that much.

Could not argue about the price of a Ryzen, can't beat that. :)

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

#144

Post by wiredfool »

dahfizz wrote: post #134
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.

That's crazy. In the USA, $2000 gets a m2 air with 24GB ram and 1TB drive. The cheapest option is $1200. Is there added taxes / tarrifs for the european prices? That's much worse than just the EUR/USD exchange rate.

In Ireland, vat is 23% on electronics. Businesses basically don’t pay that but it still is there for the ordinary buyer.

My m2 air 24/1tb from work was 2300 or so, my personal m1 air 16/512 was 1850 a year earlier. Don’t see a huge difference between them, but the work one in particular is a giant leap ahead of the 5tr old mbp it replaced.

No doubt they’re pricey

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

#145

Post by spaceman_2020 »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74
pigsty wrote: post #30

The dollar is insanely strong right now and global Mac prices raised in accordance with that. In places that don’t use USD, prices shot up by tens of percent overnight while the US prices are the same as ever. Japan, for example, got a price increase of about 40% on all items. Unsurprisingly, sales declined.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

Outside of Peter Zeihan, I'm also utterly surprised that no one even brings up the demographics debate. Everyone has been so indoctrinated on the "we have too many people" propaganda that they haven't even realized how fast birth rates have dropped across the globe (and they're dropping even faster now).

The demographics of Europe, China, Japan and S. Korea are all terminal at this point. Outside of UK, France, and to some extent, Germany, most of these countries don't even have an immigrant culture to make up for the shortfall.

America, meanwhile, has decent native birth rate AND a culture that's always willing to accommodate new people.

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

#146

Post by Dalewyn »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #131
Dalewyn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>With that said, I can easily break past 16GB just running Windows and Chrome I find that hard to believe since Chrome now sleeps tabs. I have Chrome with 60+ tabs open right now (yes, I'm one of those hoarders) and only eats 2,7GB RAM with a total system usage of ~9GB including all my other apps I have minimized right now (Signal, Torrent, Weather, PotPlayer, etc). So I seriously doubt you're blowing past the 16GB j…

Chrome eats a stupid amount of RAM even if it tries to not; just earlier I closed Chrome on one of my machines which immediately released 10GB of RAM. Combine that with however much Windows generally consumes and that's close to or even past the 16GB mark.

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

#147

Post by prepend »

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 tried to use Lenovo and I see the value in double the money.

Although I’d probably just buy a 3 year old Air for 800euro rather than buy a new one at that price point.

For durability, I would expect that old Air to last longer than a brand new Lenovo.

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

#148

Post by TMWNN »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74
pigsty wrote: post #30

The dollar is insanely strong right now and global Mac prices raised in accordance with that. In places that don’t use USD, prices shot up by tens of percent overnight while the US prices are the same as ever. Japan, for example, got a price increase of about 40% on all items. Unsurprisingly, sales declined.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

>This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance.

I figured out a while ago that anyone who mentions the "petrodollar" in a geopolitical context knows knothing about geopolitics.

Bonus idiocy points if "BRICS" is mentioned in a way that implies any kind of formal collectivity, as opposed to a catchy nickname Goldman Sachs created 20 years ago for certain large emerging economies.

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

#149

Post by nsteel »

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.

Speaking as someone who has and uses a Windows laptop with 8GB of RAM, that's an absurd statement. The "new minimum" in terms of what you usually see for sale, is (still) more like 16GB.

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

#150

Post by spaceman_2020 »

enlyth wrote: post #70
GoToRO wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forgot that everybody bought computers in order to attend online classes and wfh?

Apart from this, if you're an enthusiast who likes to build their own PC, component prices have gone insane. A flagship GPU is 2000 dollars, and motherboards are priced so high that Gamer's Nexus decided to do a 25 minute video rant about it. The returns are diminishing, it's not worth to get a 4090 RTX with DDR5 and a compatible mobo, if for 1/3 of the price you can get 90% of the performance with a used 3090 and DD…

reckon we're also entering the territory where even older hardware is "good enough", especially since so much work is now in the browser. My 4 year old Thinkpad runs fast enough that I won't feel the need to upgrade for a while. My other 5 year old Macbook is the same.

I also built a desktop 2 years ago and that's so smooth and fast that unless something physically breaks, I can easily stretch it out for 5 years.

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