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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

#351

Post by flashback2199 »

astrange wrote: post #292
flashback2199 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why are you arguing about PC performance with your friends? Don't you have something better to do? The biggest advantage of ARM over x86 is security, efficiency is second. Performance is nice to have but is kind of coincidental (depending on workload) and I'd expect everyone else to catch up.

Are you lost? This is HN, I talk with people about computers a lot.

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

#352

Post by quitit »

exabrial wrote: post #287
quitit wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is pretty straight forward: it has no fan and limited ram. It supports a 6K screen in addition to the built-in screen. It's reasonable to say that if you need 3 screens to get your job done, then that is not representative of the market for apple's lowest-end laptop.

Dude my old galaxy phone from yesterday could drive a 4k display

Filing this under irrelevant. My dude.

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

#353

Post by quitit »

mmcnl wrote: post #330
quitit wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is pretty straight forward: it has no fan and limited ram. It supports a 6K screen in addition to the built-in screen. It's reasonable to say that if you need 3 screens to get your job done, then that is not representative of the market for apple's lowest-end laptop.

The basic office setup in most companies is two screens with a dock (lid closed). That's a super common way of working. RAM and fan has nothing to do with it, the cheapest low-end Windows laptops can do this with ease, it doesn't stress the RAM, CPU or GPU at all.

> RAM and fan has nothing to do with it, the cheapest low-end Windows laptops can do this with ease, it doesn't stress the RAM, CPU or GPU at all.

- M-series uses unified memory, the ram does in fact matter.

- Heat also matters, because throttling. The Air uses a fanless, heatsink system.

- Whatever cheapest low-end PC you’re imagining is not fanless and not running an external 6k monitor at 60Hz.

- None of those systems are optimised to maintain performance while possessing an 18 hour battery life. None of those even have an 18 hour battery life.

The Air serves a clear market segment. It’s their entry level laptop, the problem isn’t the laptop.

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

#354

Post by charlie0 »

asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

If you can afford multiple monitors, surely you can afford a slightly more expensive laptop.

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

#355

Post by kylec »

sroussey wrote: post #210
kylec wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to spend a minimum of $2000 though, the new $1600 MacBook Pro also only supports one external display.

Yeah, the new MacBook Pro with a non Pro or Max chip is essentially an Air with a couple extra ports. I don't think they should have released it.

The screen is substantially better, and the addition of the ports will be useful for a lot of people. Honestly, the base Apple Silicon chips are more than fast enough for most people, if they supported more than one external display I would have no problem recommending the M3 MacBook Pro with a RAM upgrade.

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

#356

Post by claytongulick »

d3w4s9 wrote: post #246
claytongulick wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever actually tried driving decent large monitors from those crappy intel chips? I have. Engineering tradeoffs indeed. For all its flaws, Apple focuses on making sure there is a good experience overall. In general, they'd rather have a more limited hardware ecosystem that works better than a broad ecosystem that's flaky. There are tradeoffs to both approaches. I go back and forth between windows and mac, and…

I have done dual external monitor setup for years on Intel and AMD laptops without any issues. The standard setup at my company is a ThinkPad connected to dual 27" monitor. My company has thousand of employees. (Mac setup is also available for those who requests.) Many many companies offer a similar setup for employees. Maybe you need a reality check first.

> Maybe you need a reality check first.

Thanks for the kindness, I had my first laptop (PC) in the mid 80s, and have been writing software on various hardware configurations for 30 years, so maybe I just need a bit more reality I guess?

> The standard setup at my company is a ThinkPad connected to dual 27" monitors

No one claimed that dual monitors isn't possible.

Running two 4k large, high quality monitors off a low-end Intel integrated video controller at 120hz is going to be harder.

Apple is focused on higher-end experience, always has been. They're not a great choice if you're looking for standard enterprise arrangements.

You can go into pretty much any bank or office and see the kinds of setups that you're talking about.

You can also see the flicker and wince at the eye-strain.

This is a silly discussion.

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

#357

Post by scarface_74 »

wubrr wrote: post #305
scarface_74 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is total bullshit. Amazon and Microsoft both support the Mac thoroughly. From what I saw when I was there, most developers at Amazon use Macs.

You're completely wrong. I worked at Amazon (AWS) for years, yes developers generally use macs, but they generally cannot run their entire stacks on mac. Most of the actual software people work on is run on remote linux (AL2) ec2 instances after syncing the code from mac. Running the entire AWS stack on macos is literally impossible at this point because major pieces aren't even built for macos (and can't be without…

No one is going to run the entire AWS stack on their Mac when it’s targeting Linux.

Amazon “suppprting” Macs mean outside developer support like AWS CLI, CDK, SAM, Amazon Chime, etc.

Of course we all spun up Isengard accounts when we needed a lot of CPU horsepower or to run some dependencies instead of running something locally. Why wouldn’t you? You worked at the only company that never had to worry about a large AWS bill.

Also all of the internally written MDM tools also supported Macs.

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

#358

Post by astrange »

musha68k wrote: post #290
astrange wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM This is a bad reason to upgrade. If you were supposed to know about it, it'd be in the specs. It's not there to improve performance or be more forward compatible, it's because the camera upgrades need it.

OOM kills are basically the sole reason for me to upgrade iPhones. Nothing more annoying than force-reloaded/lost state in/between apps while on-the-go and under tight time constraints. Also somewhat true: new lenses are amazing but “computational photography” defaults sometimes less compelling than my old iPhone X’s more “honest” output. I’m going to play around with RAW some more if I get the time for it though.

Apps exiting in the background actually depends on storage size as well as RAM; there's a kind of swap for them but it has a daily disk writes budget.

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

#359

Post by floydnoel »

scrlk wrote: post #167
blktiger wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't all of the new M3 Macs announced the same price as they previously were or lower? Same with the recently announced iPhones? Or am I mis-remembering? Seems like prices not increasing given all the recent inflation are actually a price decrease pretty much across the board not an increase on the average selling price?

Entry level pricing for a MacBook Pro now starts at $1599 rather than $1299.

That thing had the same CPU as the MacBook Air. There was nothing "pro" about it. I'm so happy it's finally gone!

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

#360

Post by philistine »

the-golden-one wrote: post #199
hajile wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPU is critical to future profits though. Apple really wants your monthly subscription to Apple Arcade and they want to expand in other game areas which is why they've been paying AAA companies to optimize for Mac. This also ties into their VR headset where gaming will be one of the core features.

Hardly any AAA companies are optimising for the Apple GPU. MoltenVK is where all the interest is. Even if they did, there is very little in Apple Arcade which taxes the GPU, most target the lowest common denominator in terms of supported iOS/phone combinations. The original Apple Arcade strategy was for AAA titles, but for whatever reason that wasn’t pursued, so now we have a tonne of casual games and re-releases of…

> The original Apple Arcade strategy was for AAA titles

Can you prove that statement? I bet you can't, cause it's simply not true. Every Arcade title is playable from an iPhone to a Mac by way of Apple TV. It was never going to get AAA titles.

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