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M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

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Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#151

Post by lukas099 »

masklinn wrote: post #115
user_7832 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So... functionally useless. (Disclaimer, I haven't driven a sports car but I have driven cars between "nice" and "struggles to reach the speed limit") While it might appear to be very similar, having a sports car that you're capable of driving well/defensively can literally be a life saver. There was this video from a few years back on reddit of this guy in a 911. Vehicle in front suddenly stops/crashes, he needs t…

> While it might appear to be very similar, having a sports car can literally be a life saver. Or it can be a life ender by planting you into the side of the road, something mustangs and BMWs are well known for, amongst others. > that you're capable of driving well/defensively If you need to be a skilled pilot to face the situation, it's less the car and more the pilot which does the life saving. And even skilled pil…

So basically while more sportiness can make you safer in theory, in practice you have a human in the mix who is all but guaranteed to drive less safely. I agree.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#152

Post by cesaref »

rahoulb wrote: post #22
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #8

Feels like we’ve gone from “it’s just better, it’s obviously better you can see with your eyes and feel it as you use it” when M1/2 dropped. To trying to justify why the M3 is 20% faster than the M1 and the M2 was also 20% faster than the M1 and weirdly Apple is only comparing it to their older processor. Like people, maybe it’s just an underwhelming update… no need to pretend it’s not.

I bought my M1 MacBook Pro not long after they were released. It's approaching 3 years old which is a pretty standard age for people to start looking at a replacement - I guess that's why they're comparing it to the M1. Slight tangent - even though the MBP has been struggling to handle my dev work (partly because the codebase I'm working on has grown significantly in the last two years) I won't be upgrading. Work bou…

Having been all over the apple range over the years, the M1 Max Macbook Pro i'm currently using has been I would say the best of their laptops since the original G4 Powerbook. A couple of years into ownership of this machine, and it's been an excellent experience.

I develop on it every day, and i've no need to upgrade it, so i'll wait for the M4 :)

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#153

Post by Terretta »

jwells89 wrote: post #140
wubrr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the support for even one monitor is by far worse than windows or linux IMO. - Monitor randomly resets/readjusts for no apparent reason. Like multiple times every hour. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-m…

I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. > Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS…

> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it.

Agreed, however it's arguably for a different mental model. If people think of it as "focus mode" or "workspace mode" it makes more sense. Four finger swipe to slide between the workspaces or focuses.

More importantly, you don't need MOOM.

- - -

To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either:

1) hold shift option ⌥ and click the green maximize button on the top left of the window

- or -

2) hold the Option key and double click a corner of a window to maximize without full screen focus, and doing that again will size it back to where it was

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#154

Post by foldr »

flashback2199 wrote: post #134
larkost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument that this might not be great in the long run is worth considering, but in the short run I think that their results over the last few years are nothing short of astonishing. Specifically their laptops, especially when not plugged into a power source, have both stunning performance and battery life at the same time. Yes there are competitor chips from AMD and the like that are faster when plugged i…

They are making themselves more different from the rest of the market instead of "the same but better" which brought people back to the mac in the first place. It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Now it's like woo M chip is so di…

>It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had.

Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who buy computers have conversations like this with their friends. I am a software engineer and could not care less which chips my friends have in their laptops.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#155

Post by claytongulick »

jwells89 wrote: post #140
wubrr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the support for even one monitor is by far worse than windows or linux IMO. - Monitor randomly resets/readjusts for no apparent reason. Like multiple times every hour. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-m…

I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. > Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS…

Interesting - it's one of the killer features of macos for me.

I use it to compartmentalize stuff I'm working on, and 4 finger swipe between them.

I have a couple instances of VSCode, some app/debugging browser windows, some chrome profile windows etc... all running full screen and I spend my day brush swiping between them.

It may be different for me because I work on a 14" macbook pro, mostly at coffee shops or unusual work locations, so I don't have a large monitor setup. I don't think I'd use it much if I had more of a traditional desk/multimonitor config.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#156

Post by Der_Einzige »

varispeed wrote: post #85
user_7832 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some engineering compromises I can understand, most appear to simply be anti-consumer/cash-grabs. Need more than 8gb ram? Hope you've got sufficient money. Want a high refresh rate screen present in cheap android phones? Sorry not for our base models.

Even the lowest tier models probably beat any PC laptop when it comes to usability and comfort though.

Ah yes, the 8gb ram models in almost 2024 with crippled SSDs are beating equivalent PC laptops for their price... NOT!

8gb wasn't even enough in 2015!

Apple competes and demolishes anything from PC in battery and build quality. Certainly not in usability and subjectively comfort.

Also, low tier PCs support multiple monitors. Try getting that on the macbook Air.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#157

Post by foldr »

wubrr wrote: post #136
stouset wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unix tools/shell is attempting to follow more-or-less standardish unix/linux setup but fails pretty hard, with many of the same commands existing but behaving just differently enough to be annoying. I'm pretty sure this is simply you expecting GNU and actually getting FreeBSD-based tooling. It's not wrong, it's just different than what you expected.

Not at all. As a single example - macos comes with an extremely outdated version of GNU bash (3.2) from 2007. And yes, this has consequences in that many modern bash scripts depend on bash 4+ (current latest GNU bash is 5.2+).

Zsh has been the default shell on MacOS for ages now. If you need a more modern bash then you can easily install it using brew or other common package managers. This is a total non-issue.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#159

Post by lukas099 »

user_7832 wrote: post #84
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of compromises are made to get the Air to the size, weight, and most importantly, price point (ie sub-$1k) that it is. It is Apple’s best selling computer by quite a bit. They sell metric assloads of the $999 base model each fall when school starts. IMO the $999 one (or $899 with education discount) is literally the best price:perf ratio of any computer available today or at any time in my recent memory. It’s as…

> Lots of compromises are made to get the Air to the size, weight, and most importantly, price point (ie sub-$1k) that it is. > IMO the $999 one (or $899 with education discount) is literally the best price:perf ratio of any computer available today or at any time in my recent memory. It’s astounding how good it is for that price. It is possible for your comment to be correct while the poster above is also correct. T…

> knowingly gimp the hardware to upsell the more expensive versions.

I'm skeptical. A ton of money is dumped into optimizing everything and then they just throw it down the drain? That would drive more people to the competition than to higher-priced Macs.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#160

Post by hashhar »

arcatech wrote: post #145
wubrr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the support for even one monitor is by far worse than windows or linux IMO. - Monitor randomly resets/readjusts for no apparent reason. Like multiple times every hour. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-m…

Do you honestly believe all of those things happen to everyone? You think everyone who likes macOS is just ignoring those kinds of severe issues? Obviously you have some kind of problem with your system.

Well, most of what he is saying are actually easily reproducible macOS quirks.

- Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list.

This indeed happens relatively often if you have multiple monitors and switch between them for any reason. e.g. in my case I have two machines and two monitors, sometimes I switch the primary monitor to a specific machine and this almost always fucks up macOS. Solution is to disconnect and reconnect the monitor.

- Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-maximizing the window in question, moving the other window over and then re-maximizing the window again. But why is this nonsense needed? What problem could this restriction possibly be solving?

A lot of people who use macOS agree that the fullscreen window thing is needless and makes for quirky behaviour.

- Dock constantly breaks/becomes inaccessible. This is a known problem for at least 5+ years - the solution is to manually kill and restart the process???

- Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps).

Yep, happens quite frequently to multiple people I know and in multiple apps.

- Bad defaults in terms of keypress repeat times and rate. No apparent way to change this from settings - need to run commands and re-login to test new behaviour.

Indeed this is very painful for people who are non-developers and are used to be able to have higher repeat rates.

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