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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#601

Post by acomjean »

buildfocus wrote: post #437
homefree wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

Is the performance gap so huge? Power efficiency yes, absolutely, but for peak performance last I saw the last AMD vs M3 benchmarks were a slightly slower single core, and a little faster in multicore. Doesn't seem as world changing as described.

I ran some bioinformatics pipelines on an AMD pangolin notebook. Its was faster than the apple M2 (I think it was an M2 or M3) notebook my work neighbor had. My machine had more RAM, but still for workloads that use the extra cores it made a difference.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#602

Post by baby_souffle »

JadeNB wrote: post #536
Aeolun wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My $2000 linux desktop is still faster and snappier than the $4000 macbook, but it’s the only thing laptop sized that feels even close.

> My $2000 linux desktop is still faster and snappier than the $4000 macbook, but it’s the only thing laptop sized that feels even close. What brand?

Probably diy.

2k buys you a decent thread ripper or 59xx series and as much ram as you can throw at it.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#603

Post by kerkeslager »

hnlmorg wrote: post #473
guhidalg wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. No other laptop can sustain peak performance as long as the M-series Macs. The only thing that competes is a dedicated desktop with a big cooler and fan. Mac laptops feel faster, even if the synthetic benchmarks say otherwise.

I don’t agree. Compile times are definitely and very noticeably quicker on my Intel gaming laptop (that’s actually a few years old now) vs my M3 MBP. That said, I’ve never once felt that the M3 MBPs are sluggish. They are definitely super quick machines. And the fact that I can go a full day without charging even when using moderately heavy workloads is truly jaw droppingly impressive. I’d definitely take the power p…

In guhidalg's defense, they did say that the "Mac laptops feel faster" (emphasis mine) not that they are faster. There's a trick here with Macs, which is that their user interfaces for the OS and many programs are tightly integrated with the hardware which makes the UI faster--that's the "feel faster"--it's a software, not hardware thing. In cases where the software is equivalent (i.e. cross-platform compilers like GCC/Clang/Cargo) you're going to see little difference, but your OS experience is definitely snappier on Macs.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#604

Post by danielheath »

buildfocus wrote: post #437
homefree wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

Is the performance gap so huge? Power efficiency yes, absolutely, but for peak performance last I saw the last AMD vs M3 benchmarks were a slightly slower single core, and a little faster in multicore. Doesn't seem as world changing as described.

Most laptops are thermally constrained when it comes to speed - power efficiency means you can run at full speed longer without overheating.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#605

Post by rconti »

homefree wrote: post #411
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

But it seems the parent's point is there's no reason Dell couldn't have kept making improved XPS models. Maybe they don't compare on a $/watt basis with Apple silicon, but you could presumably have still paid less and gotten something pretty decent.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#606

Post by WillPostForFood »

indemnity wrote: post #503
throwup238 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is better because they’re not competing on price which is why they can afford to bring so many things in house. That’s how they can afford the talent and other R&D resources. We get what we pay for.

$899 (edu) or $999 is extremely competitive for what you get. Most people buying an entry level computer these days should at least consider stretching to get a MBA than the $300-400 shovelware, they’ll get so much use out of it. My wife is still using her 2020 M1 Air and it’s still as snappy as the day we got it, still works for all her use cases. Incredible value.

While they are still in stock, 13" M2 Macbook Air w/16GB RAM and 256GB SSD are only $799 at Best Buy & Amazon right now.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#607

Post by philomath_mn »

tredre3 wrote: post #272
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

Seems like you haven't actually looked into it if that's the impression you got, because both Thinkpad (X1) and Framework (13) make a laptop that fit your requirements. The X1 carbon even offers a 4k OLED option if you want it.

Going from an X1 Carbon to a MBP felt like stepping 10 years into the future. The seamless lid close, battery life, operating temp, build quality and performance were all _huge_ upgrades.

I held out on Mac for 20 yrs, no idea what I was thinking.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#608

Post by sunshowers »

usefulcat wrote: post #547
sunshowers wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy from them and consider it abusive at the same time. What a concept.

I think "egregious" would be a fairer, more accurate adjective. I know people who have been victims of actual abuse; it's not remotely the same thing as paying too much for a laptop.

I've been repeatedly abused for big parts of my life, and I have a CPTSD diagnosis from it.

It's not just paying too much, it's one of the world's most valuable mega-corporations asking you to pay too much. If it were a boutique shop I wouldn't call it abusive. It's a combination of the bad behavior and the exercise of raw power that makes it so.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#609

Post by thombles »

kerkeslager wrote: post #600
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

> I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. I know this isn't your point but this is exactly why I don't use docker--but I'm a bit surprised to hear you mention `cargo build` as something that might fill up the disk. I'v…

The optimised release binary isn't the issue - it's the many GB of build artifacts produced along the way if you have a lot of dependencies. You can accumulate hundreds of GB in target/ over time working on large projects.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#610

Post by hollandheese »

ruuda wrote: post #395
tw04 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not a surface laptop 7? https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surfac... Wtf is with the downvotes? It literally hits every requirement he had, and the surface laptops are some of the best windows/nix laptops on the market.

It seems I can configure it with at most 1TB of storage, and the display is lower resolution, but aside from that it does look like a nice device.

Just buy a 256 GB model and upgrade the drive yourself to 2TB for $150ish.

And yes, the screen is slightly lower DPI (201 VS 226) but you do get a better aspect ratio in return.

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