Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

M4 MacBook Pro

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#711

Post by serf »

hilux wrote: post #573
dmz73 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does…

> If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. I happen to be in the midst of a repair with Apple right now. And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone. Aside from the occasional sticker, I don't have any custom hardware mods to my phone or laptop, and nor do 99.99% of peo…

>And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone.

except that isn't generally how factory repairs are handled.

I don't know about Apple specifically, but other groups (Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo) will happily swap your unit with a factory refurbished or warranty-repaired unit as long as it was sufficiently qualified before hand -- so the 'replaced with a newer unit' concept might be fantasy.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#712

Post by giantrobot »

tomcam wrote: post #605
the_king wrote: post #593

The single core performance looks really fast. Chip | Geekbench Score (Process) ---- | ------------------------ M1 | 2,419 (5nm) M2 | 2,658 (5nm) M3 | 3,076 (3nm) M4* | 3,810 (3nm) In my experience, single-core CPU is the best all-around indicator of how "fast" a machine feels. I feel like Apple kind of buried this in their press release. M4 benchmark source: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8171874

I don't know much about modern Geekbench scores, but it that chart seems to show that M1s are still pretty good? It appears that M4 is only about 50% faster. Somehow I would expect more like 100% improvement. Flameproof suit donned. Please correct me because I'm pretty ignorant about modern hardware. My main interest is playing lots of tracks live in Logic Pro.

The M1 was pretty fast when it debuted. If you own an M1 Mac its CPU has not gotten any slower over the years. While newer M-series might be faster, the old one is no slower.

The M1s are likely to remain pretty usable machines for a few years yet, assuming your workload has not or does not significantly change.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#713

Post by linguae »

hilux wrote: post #573
dmz73 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does…

> If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. I happen to be in the midst of a repair with Apple right now. And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone. Aside from the occasional sticker, I don't have any custom hardware mods to my phone or laptop, and nor do 99.99% of peo…

Why not both? Why can’t we have a good usability experience AND control? In fact, we used to have that via the Mac hardware and software of the 1990s and 2000s, as well as NeXT’s software and hardware.

There was a time when Apple’s hardware was user-serviceable; I fondly remember my 2006 MacBook, with easily-upgradable RAM and storage. I also remember a time when Mac OS X didn’t have notarization and when the App Store didn’t exist. I would gladly use a patched version of Snow Leopard or even Tiger running on my Framework 13 if this were an option and if a modern web browser were available.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#714

Post by iluvcommunism »

sroussey wrote: post #304
iluvcommunism wrote: post #145

I have an m3 ultra. I don’t think I need to upgrade. I also find it amusing they’re comparing the m4 to the m1 and i7 processors.

There is no M3 Ultra.

I meant pro. My mistake. I was going to maybe upgrade it but it appears m4 isn’t much better.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#715

Post by iluvcommunism »

roopepal wrote: post #448
iluvcommunism wrote: post #145

I have an m3 ultra. I don’t think I need to upgrade. I also find it amusing they’re comparing the m4 to the m1 and i7 processors.

I find it amusing how you answer your own "question" before asking it. Why would they target the marketing material at people who already know they aren't going to need to upgrade?

Roopepal did someone piss in your coffee this morning? I had no questions. I’m merely saying that it’s funny they’re comparing to old technology instead of last year’s. It’s a valid criticism. Take a breath.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#716

Post by joeevans1000 »

Insane cost for the amount of storage and RAM. I mean, year over year for Apple, awesome! Compared to the rest of the brands... so ridiculously expensive. Watching the price climb to 5K as you add in the new normal for hardware specs is absurd.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#717

Post by phs318u »

derefr wrote: post #656
GeekyBear wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application Consulting a certificate revocation list is a standard security feature, not a privacy issue.

Further, there is a CRL/OCSP cache — which means that if you're running a program frequently, Apple are not receiving a fine-grained log of your executions, just a coarse-grained log of the checks from the cache's TTL timeouts. Also, a CRL/OCSP check isn't a gating check — i.e. it doesn't "fail safe" by disallowing execution if the check doesn't go through. (If it did, you wouldn't be able to run anything without an…

This reply is very informative and should be much more visible given the extent of general ignorance about the "zomg it phones home" feature.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#718

Post by Razengan »

dmz73 wrote: post #562
lukev wrote: post #535

I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering. They didn't roll out _any_ AI features until they were capable of running them locally, and before doing any cloud-based AI they designed and rolled out Private Cloud Compute. You can argue about whether it's actually bulletproof or not but the fact is, nobody else is even trying, and have lost sight of all privacy-focused features in their rush to ship anything a…

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does…

> where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.

You are free to verify.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#719

Post by kristianp »

charlescurt123 wrote: post #508
garciasn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run our LLM workloads on a M2 Ultra because of this. 2x the VRAM; one-time cost at $5350 was the same as, at the time, 1 month of 80GB VRAM GPU in GCP. Works well for us.

comparing a laptop to a A100 (312 teraFLOPS) or H100 (~1P FLOPS) server is a stretch to say the least. An M2 is according to a reddit post around 27 tflops So What workflow would use something like this?

> comparing a laptop

Small correction: the M2 Ultra isn't found in laptops, its in the Studio.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#720

Post by Atotalnoob »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #661
the_king wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my point. Saying something is the fastest ever is marketing code (at least to me) for minor improvement over the previous generation. If you're 30% faster than the previous generation, I'd rather see that because my assumption is it's 5%.

Yeah, better than the glaring, 10x better than i7 Intel Mac. Like that's even a valid point of reference.

Not really fair to the absolutely ancient i7 Intel Macs.
Post reply on HN