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

#211

Post by ricardobayes » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #169

mgraupner wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple: 500 nits display, whole working day battery, fans almost never on, much higher resale value. Might be worth it for some people.

That combined with the best speakers you will ever hear in a laptop, keyboard and touchpad you know will be at least decent (ye olde butterfly notwithstanding), the steep price tag kind of sort of starts to partially make a bit more sense. The price is still stupid, but a potential customer not needing to give a crap about his new computer might just make the steep price worth it.

Why would I care about laptop speakers? 1600 EUR gives me plenty of room to get a normal laptop, Harman-kardon soundsticks plus top-end Sennheiser headphones. No matter how good laptop speakers are, they won't even be near the ones mentioned.

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

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Post by fauxpause_ » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #100

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> US economic dominance is about to go into hyperdrive Our biggest export is dollars. We accept ship loads of consumer goods and in exchange send the ships back empty. What a deal.

Sometimes full of trash

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

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Post by rwalle » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

snapcaster wrote: post #160

ricardobayes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think "commodity" laptop manufacturers have successfully tricked people into thinking a laptop is a collection of integers (16gb RAM, N core processor, etc) but I have NEVER used a laptop even close to as performant as the m1 and m1 ultra based macbook pros. You really have to experience it to believe it, it literally never lags no matter what or is ever unresponsive regardless of what i'm doing. Not to mention the…

16GB is objectively better than 8GB in every way even if you compare across platforms, so yes it is correctly a numbers game

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

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Post by liminal » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

Work just bought me a new M2 Macbook Pro. It works great, but it's SO UGLY! I was really surprised to have such a negative emotional response to a new Apple product.

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

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Post by bananapub » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

ralfn wrote: post #161

masklinn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and that’s always been an issue with Apple products: they set their prices in USD, then set the foreign price using conversions from around release date (plus taxes obviously). That means if the dollar was very strong at release, the machines get very expensive in foreign currency.

Which is weird, because barely any part of it is produced in the US. So it's not that their costs are going up. They are just not realizing they are self sabotaging in terms of opportunity costs. If they adjust prices to purchasing power, with at least 30% profit marge, windows laptops and chromebooks would be having crisis talks right about now. People would prefer the Apple stuff, but not at that price. Even if you…

why is it weird?

Apple states its quarterly results in USD, which is all their investors/media care about, so of course Apple cares enormously about profit/revenue in USD. in addition, much of their design/engineering/management/etc costs are in or coupled to USD.

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

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Post by spamizbad » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

andrekandre wrote: post #141

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I think the 2009 recession for the US, and our anemic response to it, created a huge swath of perma-bears across the political spectrum who have predicted the US economy will collapse every year since 2011.

Like a broken clock I’m sure they’ll eventually be correct.

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

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Post by pjc50 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #145

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Would you like to explain the link between the absolute number of people in a country and the value of its currency vs the dollar?

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

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Post by nkotov » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

I "downsized" from a MacBook Pro 15 with high specs (i9, dedicated GPU, 64 GB RAM) to a MacBook Air M2 and don't regret the decision. I don't feel I'm missing out on anything except when I want to run a VM locally (Win 98 SE to play retro games). I think the M1/M2 chips are so good that there is no reason to want to upgrade as often and the baseline chips are good for 95% of the workloads people have.

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

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Post by Mindwipe » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #129

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 re…

The sticker shock of having to purchase the RAM/storage for the lifetime of the device isn't typical, and is above market rates for those things.

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

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Post by PuppyTailWags » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #164

piva00 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but completely missing the point. The case is not that the PM couldn't have access to a Macbook if they so wanted but that it'd take the head of government of a country a whole month of their take-home salary to afford one. It's quite absurd, not the accessibility for the PM but to give a hint to how the average person of said country would definitely be priced out.

But a mac air is a luxury item, and its pricing reflects that. I don't think it's absurd at all. A similarly capable laptop could be had for a much lower price, so people that complain they cannot get this luxury item for an "affordable" price just sounds entitled to me.

This doesn't read like a complaint about the pricing per se. It's more like pointing out Apple's low sales might have something to do with their high pricing and then providing that the pricing is unattainable for laypeople by way of stating the single figurehead of a country will still be out a month's income if they want one.