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My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

michael.stapelberg.ch

261–270 of 417 posts

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually can’t think of one hobby that costs less than $3k

A lot of things are cheap to taste — a second hand bike and some $200 running shoes and you’re training for a triathlon. Or a makerspace membership and you’re now sewing or doing 3d printing. It’s once you get “serious” and need to have your own equipment that all these things get real. Or in the case of things like social dance, you want to take time off with and travel further and further away to attend pricey exch…

It’s perfectly possible to enjoy hobbies deeply without getting “serious” in the way you describe.

I’ve taken my 10 euro dance classes for years without feeling the necessity of pricey exchanges and camps.

My neighbour goes to the park many evenings to play petanque, doesn’t cost him anything.

A couple I’m friends with goes on day hikes where they do bird watching—maybe they bought a nice pair of binoculars once? Another couple likes to lay jigsaw puzzles together, not exactly breaking the bank!

My sister is learning Finnish because she never learned a non indo-european language. She bought a book.

I would wager most people’s hobbies are low key like this because either they don’t have disposable income to spend on them, or they don’t want too!

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are separate chips. But just like Strix Halo, they have to be soldered. There’s no way to reach the signal integrity required with connectors.

No, M series is a system on chip (SoC), that’s why it’s able to run local LLM models in a range impossible for other laptop brands: VRAM == RAM, unified shared memory at max speed for both CPU and GPU

Strix Halo has the same unified RAM with no separation.

Sadly it’s not in many laptops, probably the easiest way to obtain it is in the Framework Desktop or a mini pc.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#263
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4K too, at anything over 15” or so. I’m always baffled people insist otherwise.

At the distance I look at my TV screen (about 7 feet from the couch) I can't make out the pixels of the 1080p screen. 4k is lost on me. 2020 vision but I guess that is not enough.

I also have perfect vision in terms of focal length - but it turns out I have astigmatism in opposite axises in both eyes.

Glasses make a huge difference when watching TV, and are the dividing line between being able to tell the difference between 4K and 1080p and not being able to discern any.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#264
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "in terms of ranking" vs "in terms of money"?

I mean if you ranked all the hobbies in terms of cost, casually spending $3k on a laptop would be near the top of the list. But there are a small number of hobbies that are vastly more expensive. The distribution is highly skewed. Like wealth. The 99th percentile are near the top in rank (by definition) but nowhere near the top in absolute terms.

I can not think of many hobbies which are less expensive if you are serious about them. Some hobbies around me, where $3000 wouldn't get you far: Motorcycles, cars, cycling, collecting anything, woodworking, machining, music making, traveling, horses,...

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#265
post #214

> I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting. I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick. I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.

I can tell the difference between 120 and 60 just fine and of course prefer better, but it doesn’t bother me.

It’s unfortunate if it bothers you. I have the same reaction to 30Hz.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things are cheap to taste — a second hand bike and some $200 running shoes and you’re training for a triathlon. Or a makerspace membership and you’re now sewing or doing 3d printing. It’s once you get “serious” and need to have your own equipment that all these things get real. Or in the case of things like social dance, you want to take time off with and travel further and further away to attend pricey exch…

It’s perfectly possible to enjoy hobbies deeply without getting “serious” in the way you describe. I’ve taken my 10 euro dance classes for years without feeling the necessity of pricey exchanges and camps. My neighbour goes to the park many evenings to play petanque, doesn’t cost him anything. A couple I’m friends with goes on day hikes where they do bird watching—maybe they bought a nice pair of binoculars once? Ano…

Absolutely yeah, and regardless of whether it ends up eventually being expensive, I think part of what I’m saying is that it is important to know how to at least start something cheaply.

I get very frustrated with the kind of people who see one tiktok about a thing and suddenly feel like they need to spend $3k to pursue whatever their new passion is.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#267
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard many people saying CAMM2 solves this.

We're still waiting to see any CAMM-style memory module show up in a mass market product at any speed , instead of merely getting press coverage where the number of articles written seems to outnumber the number of laptops actually built and shipped. But even if you are willing to take the examples thus far seriously as real products, they haven't come close to matching the speed of soldered LPDDR.

I was considering an LPCAMM2-fitted Thinkpad. I was eyeing to buy one with less memory and then buy a 96GB module to upgrade it. However, the module was nowhere to be found in stock, and where it was found, it was priced almost like the whole laptop.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#268
post #49

i'll never understand picky preferences about monitors... i still use an LG flatron wide that's old enough to vote... and when i slack at the apple store, it's not like i notice some life-or-death difference. a monitor is a monitor. ok, i guess for graphic designers it might matter more?

Or people who read text.

that's me, and it really doesn't matter

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#269
post #142
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musicians can feel latencies as low as 1ms. Apple is designing pro gear for its target audience.

Do you have a source for that? I saw a study a short while ago showing the “just noticeable difference” for audio latency was best case around 26ms. https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3678299.3678331

That’s audio latency, not musicians doing music. In my experience if you have two musicians that are supposed to be playing unison, 5-6 ms is enough to feel “off”

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "mac community" is even worse. I recently spend $4k on linux laptop, and I get endless criticism, that it is "too expensive" for a "windows pc". I need spec for my work, and comparable mac is 4x more expensive!

Is this 16,000 dollar laptop in the room with us now?

to be pedantic, a maxed out MBP is 90200 BRL in Brazil now before AC+ and software, around 16777 USD
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