451–460 of 551 posts
Been extremely happy with Windows and WSL last couple years, so happy to be a node or two behind on AMD laptops.
Otherwise I use a workstation primarily anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive a…
>the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. naa... Amiga had the A2500 around the same time, the Mac IIx wasn't better with regards to specs in most ways. And at about $4500 more expensive (Amiga 2500 was around $3300, Mac IIx was $7769), it was vastly overpriced as is typical for Apple products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive a…
>the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. naa... Amiga had the A2500 around the same time, the Mac IIx wasn't better with regards to specs in most ways. And at about $4500 more expensive (Amiga 2500 was around $3300, Mac IIx was $7769), it was vastly overpriced as is typical for Apple products.
Well, firstly, it isn't. There are higher Geekbench 6 CPU scores, even forgetting the ones that appear to be fake or at least broken. But secondly, that would absolutely not indicate that it is the "fastest single-core performer in consumer computing". That would indicate that it is the highest scoring Geekbench 6 CPU in consumer computing. Whether or not that's actually a good proxy for the former statement is up to…
The M4 core @ 4.5 GHz has a significantly higher ST GB6 performance than Lion Cove @ 5.7 GHz or Zen 5 @ 5.7 GHz (which are almost equal at the same clock frequency, with at most a 2% advantage for Lion Cove).
Having higher GB6 scores should be representative for general-purpose computing, but there are application domains where the performance of the Apple cores has been poor in the past and M4 is unlikely to have changed anything, i.e. the computations with big integer numbers or the array operations done on the CPU cores, not on the AMX/SME accelerators.
Nevertheless, I believe that your point about the existence of higher ST GB6 scores is not weakened by the fact that those CPUs are overclocked.
For a majority of the computer users in the world, the existence of higher ST performance that can be provided by either overclocked Intel/AMD CPUs or by CPUs made by Apple is equally irrelevant, because those users would never choose any of these 2 kinds of CPUs for their work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.
> Nor have I had any desire to upgrade I never thought I'd see a processor that was 50% faster single-core and 80% faster multi-core and just shrug. My M1 Pro still feels so magically fast. I'm really happy that Apple keeps pushing things and I'll be grateful when I do decide to upgrade, but my M1 Pro has just been such a magical machine. Every other laptop I've ever bought (Mac or PC) has run its fan regularly. I di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive a…
In the 90s, you probably wouldn't want to be using a desktop from 4 years ago, but the M1 is already 4 years old and will probably be fine for most people for years yet.
Since Snapdragon X laptops caught up to Apple on battery life I might as well buy one of those when I'll need to change. I don't need the fastest mobile CPU for watching movies and browsing the internet. But I like to have a decent amount of memory to keep a hundred tabs open.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I blame it on the PC crowd being unconsciously salty the most prestigious CPU is not available to them. You heard the same stuff when talking about Android performance versus iPhone. There is a lot to criticize about Apple's silicon design, but they are leading the CPU market in terms of mindshare and attention. All the other chipmakers all feel like they're just trying to follow Apple's lead. It's wild.
I was surprised and disappointed to see that the industry didn’t start prioritizing heat output more after the M1 generation came out. That was absolutely my favorite thing about it, it made my laptop silent and cool. But anyway, what is it you see to criticize about Apple‘s Apple Silicon design? The way RAM is locked on package so it’s not upgradable, or something else? I’m kind of surprised, I don’t hear a lot of p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember too back in the day when you're looking at a Mac with 1/4 the power of a PC, and it's 4x the price. I think we're starting to see those ratios reversed completely. And at the same time, the power, heat, etc.. is just sitting at the floor.
Yeah, this rings true. I'm not an Apple customer, but I certainly remember the days when Mac users had to justify the much worse bang-for-the-buck of Apple hardware (then) with it being the only ticket to their preferred software experience. These days it appears more that the hardware is fantastic, especially in the laptop form factor and thermal envelope, and perhaps the downside is a languishing macOS.
The only places I can see there could be features missing are:
- IT management type stuff where it looks like Apple are happy just delegating to Microsoft (eg. my workstation is managed with InTune and runs Microsoft Defender pushed by IT),
- CUDA support if you’re into AI on NVIDIA
- Gaming I hear, but I don’t have time for that anyway :)
Of course this is biased, because I also generally just _like_ the look and feel of macOS