Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#781

Post by kjs3 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

fastaguy88 wrote: post #344

slowmotiony wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics prices in the EU are simply crazy. Recently i wanted to get a small mini-PC that would be energy efficient and I could run some AI experiments on. Reading online forums, everyone's like "just get a mac mini, couple hundred bucks and you're golden". I check the apple website and turns out they actually cost almost a thousand euro for the 16GB/256GB model. But its the same with a lot of other electronics to…

They should have said: "Just get a used Mac Mini". You can literally get them from macsales.com for less than $100. The intel machines have not gotten much faster, but their prices have dropped dramatically.

Looking there, what do you do with a 10yo Intel Mac Mini when Apple drops support for them (serious question)? If the answer is "load linux", then there are probably better intel based options.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#782

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

stametseater wrote: post #669

smoldesu wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The #1 thing preventing Apple from getting into S-tier is user-serviceable storage. Baking on the memory? It's frustrating and gimps the device lifespan, but arguably unavoidable with the bandwidth Apple is targeting. Without replaceable storage though, every Apple Silicon device is effectively a ticking time-bomb. These devices will all hit their TBW limit long before they're unusable, and Apple refused to anticipat…

Constant backups are essential when using a computer without user-serviceable storage. That or mounting another [network] drive and doing all your work from that instead of internal storage. Otherwise you'll be without your data for hours if not days/weeks whenever something inevitably goes wrong (not even with the storage itself) and you can't simply pull the drive to continue working on another computer.

> Constant backups are essential when using a computer without user-serviceable storage.

Constant backups are a necessity even if your computer has RAID-6 storage built on enterprise-grade storage.

Your office can catch fire. You can be hit by ransomware. Multiple devices in the array can fail in rapid sequence (happened to me once). Your computer can get stolen (happened to me, twice).

Have an offsite backup always on hand.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#783

Post by codexb » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

kevinherron wrote: post #35

I doubt this is about price like some people in here are suggesting. Maybe a little bit overall market trend, but primarily I would wager it’s because many, many people bought the M1 when it came out and it’s so good that the only people buying M2 are those who waited - it’s a fine spec bump, but not something you would be tempted to upgrade from M1 for.

The pricing wouldn't be so bad if their offerings aligned with the market, or at least made sense. Their base level specs are uncompetitive and borderline unusable. There's too much overlap at the lower level between macbook airs and pros. I bet a lot of people are turned off by the idea of spending over $2k on a laptop that still only has a 512 GB SSD.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#784

Post by kristopolous » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #619

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big advantage of the older Macs and Thinkpads and Elitebooks and XPS and so on: you can trivially restore an aged 10-year-old T440P into a highly functional machine by bumping it up to 16GB of RAM, adding a new battery, and a couple of 1 or 2TB SSDs. I did the same a couple of times with my 2008 MBP, that was indeed a great machine. All of the above can easily be updated to modern Linux or Windows 10 install…

This is why I'm looking forward to the framework 16". My system76 still works great, but I would love an upgraded graphics card. The framework 16" could be the last laptop I ever buy.

I really wish they had other keyboard options. The macbook clone keyboard and trackpad is a dealbreaker for me. Something with a little less "design" and a little more function would be great.

Or alternatively there were 3rd party providers of them

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#785

Post by rootcage » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #370

drooopy wrote: post #32

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm…

FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years?…

I just bought a Mac Pro M2 in January after using a 2013 Macbook air for ~10 years. It lasted me through college and more, still runs smoothly to this day. Apple's build quality cannot be understated.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#786

Post by Al-Khwarizmi » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #501

anthonypasq wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you ever stop to think that maybe if they bought a $1200 windows machine it would have lasted 4 years. also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.

The problem is finding the $1200 windows machine that feels valuable and worth it after four years; it's hard to find one that has the "build quality" if you will. Maybe people with the Surface are pleased with it still, that looked pretty nice.

Out of 6 ThinkPads from the "pro" tiers that I've had, none of them failed at all and all of them worked fine for much longer than that, except from one whose screen failed after 3 years or so (ThinkPads had a bad quality period around the Vista era, then recovered much of the lost quality, although if they fall from a height they probably no longer end up fine while denting the ground like my 2005 ThinkPad did. By the way, in fact that ThinkPad, from 2005, still works, except that obviously it has almost no battery, doesn't support the latest Windows and is slow with current bloated software and websites).

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#787

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

slaw wrote: post #680

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are buying into a distorted image of the typical US population experience. Access to healthcare is pretty much instant and high quality for all but the very bottom of the society. 85%+ of the population can get an appointment within a day or two and if it’s urgent can access numerous urgent care clinics with almost no wait. Best I can tell for many European countries the situation is significantly worse in terms…

Very bottom of society has free healthcare. For example for WA. https://www.hca.wa.gov/free-or-low-cost-health-care

In some states such as Florida and Texas, having low income is not enough for an adult to qualify for Medicaid.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#788

Post by yamtaddle » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #355

altcognito wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to hear more macOS users admit that their equipment was a status indicator, overpriced for what it is. I’m sure apple is excited about cultivating this brand identity. If there is one way I can think that they could get away from the “Sony” or Nike model, it’s being seen as a luxury item, a tool of the select few, instead of just a high quality brand, that yes, might be a little more expensive. -- Just a…

I'd also love to hear how could people price in the value of the experience they get from using their device every single day. I say that as a former Mac/Apple hater, I used to think all the usual tropes: how overpriced it was for the configuration, how all Mac users were part of a cult, brainwashed for status, so on and so forth. Until I got a Mac for work, planning to just install Linux on it but after seeing some…

Similar story here. Thought Macs were just overpriced crap, spent about 10 years as a DOS/Windows user than another 10 on Windows and Linux, before being issued a Macbook Pro at a new job.

By a few months in I was a convert. Having to use another OS for anything serious and involving a GUI makes me grumpy now. Everything before that looked like half-broken garbage, in hindsight. I had no idea how much time I'd been losing to glitchy software and bad hardware until about 90% of that was taken away. Felt like an idiot for not giving Macs a real chance much sooner.

I was also an Android user at the time, and that was a dual-platform mobile dev job—using both those operating systems extensively on a range of hardware converted me to iOS, too, in a hurry. Much smoother, better UI, and better battery life. Sold.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#789

Post by LanceH » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

smith7018 wrote: post #753

runjake wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am surprised I am getting downvoted Probably for this statement: > FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. and subsequently for this flamey statement: > You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product. FWIW, it seems like you got incredibly lucky. In recent years, I've been t…

Seems far more likely that you've been incredibly unlucky. I've had many Macs and have never had battery expansion or logic board failures. I know many people that still use their 2013-era machines and they're still chugging along.

The thing is, they go from "works great" to "totally broken" with virtually no in between, and no ability of the owner to do anything about it.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#790

Post by nomel » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #342

arcticbull wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New macOS historically runs on devices between 5 and 10 years old. Longest in recent memory was El Cap which supported 8-10 year old devices. Shortest was Snow Leopard, which supported 3 year old devices. Ventura is lower, 4-5 years, but that happens periodically when aligned with major architectural changes. [edit] Honestly, their support cycle is pretty impressive. And just because they don't release a newer versio…

Why should 4-5 years be lauded? I daily-drive an AthlonXP machine from 2008. Nothing about the hardware requires dropping support. (Linux has, sadly but understandably, dropped support for the older 386/486/ppro architectures in the name of kernel sanity, but I wouldn't run a desktop with any of those anyway.) Dropping support for hardware that still runs perfectly fine, and isn't a heinous mess of architectural work…

> I daily-drive an AthlonXP machine from 2008. Nothing about the hardware requires dropping support.

Does Windows 11 work on that machine? Does Windows 10?