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

#911

Post by sys_64738 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 11:59 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #211

Dalewyn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That combined with the best speakers you will ever hear in a laptop, keyboard and touchpad you know will be at least decent (ye olde butterfly notwithstanding), the steep price tag kind of sort of starts to partially make a bit more sense. The price is still stupid, but a potential customer not needing to give a crap about his new computer might just make the steep price worth it.

Why would I care about laptop speakers? 1600 EUR gives me plenty of room to get a normal laptop, Harman-kardon soundsticks plus top-end Sennheiser headphones. No matter how good laptop speakers are, they won't even be near the ones mentioned.

You need speakers to drown out the noisy fan?

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

#912

Post by jcfrei » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 12:01 AM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #646

jcfrei wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be conflating some issues here: On one hand the strong dollar has held back the US economy because it made it less competitive with lets say German exports (which are sold in euro). On the other hand the strong dollar has been great for the US consumer (cheaper to import stuff) and for the government: Easier to refinance their debt and buy stuff (raw materials, etc.) abroad. From an economic perspective B…

> On one hand the strong dollar has held back the US economy because it made it less competitive with lets say German exports (which are sold in euro) Due to higher US productivity even with the strong currency the cost of production for goods is significantly lower for same quality. US companies are generally gaining market shares in all high value goods. > On the other hand the strong dollar has been great for the…

> How is that true? I’m not following. They need dollars to buy imports and with strong dollar it’s harder to buy imports for same exports. Take Turkey as prime example currently.

On a net basis they are exporters. Meaning (again on a net basis) dollars flow into these countries and goods flow out. If the dollar is strong then companies exporting from the US are more expensive then comparable exports from other countries (which can sell for a lower dollar amount and still pay their staff, raw materials). If the dollar is weak then companies exporting from the US are comparably cheaper. The US is usually a net importer because due to a strong dollar (and high wages) it's just cheaper to import stuff from abroad.

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

#913

Post by fomine3 » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 12:34 AM UTC

Panzer04 wrote: post #73

Dalewyn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who has and uses an M2 Macbook Air with 8GB RAM, I agree it's not a lot but it's more than sufficient for any use case a Macbook Air would generally see. This literally isn't Windows where 32GB of RAM is the new minimum. I will say the Macbook Pro really should start from 16GB RAM and at least 1TB SSD; it's for professionals, isn't it?

It's still stupid. It costs Apple a minimal amount extra to vastly improve the utility of their devices with 16GB RAM and 512/1TB drives by default. But they're cutting corners here in search of product segmentation and profit, so much so customers will genuinely be suffering because of their choices.

It's pain because not only the CTO option is quite expensive, but also CTO models aren't sold and discounted well at market.

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

#914

Post by fomine3 » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 12:37 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #156

enlyth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from this, if you're an enthusiast who likes to build their own PC, component prices have gone insane. A flagship GPU is 2000 dollars, and motherboards are priced so high that Gamer's Nexus decided to do a 25 minute video rant about it. The returns are diminishing, it's not worth to get a 4090 RTX with DDR5 and a compatible mobo, if for 1/3 of the price you can get 90% of the performance with a used 3090 and DD…

>motherboards are priced so high Only if you go for the really stupid RGB "gamer" motherboards sprinkled with more fairy dust than sense. Something like this ASUS Prime Z690-P[1] is reasonably priced at just north of ~$200, it even has luxuries like 2.5gig ethernet and onboard wireless. If you want a DDR5 setup, this ASUS Prime Z690-A[2] is still ~$260 with plenty of luxuries. If you can do without a top-tier chipset…

$200 is still insane for a over not-latest low-end Z-series mobo. I hate completely useless expensive PCIe Gen5 x16 slot.

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

#915

Post by rayiner » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 12:47 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #291

rayiner wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No European country (UK excepted) has an “immigrant culture.” In recent decades, some European countries have accepted large numbers of immigrants. But as far as I can tell, they’ve even relegated to an economically disadvantaged underclass in every one of those countries. They’re not buying Apple products. For example, average income for Turks in Germany (a group that started immigrating in the 1970s) is estimated t…

Why are you cherry picking immigrant groups? What are the statistics for Poles, Italians, Russian Germans? Heck, what are the statistics for Vietnamese Germans? The US has plenty of minority and immigrant groups for which convergence is... far from happening.

> Why are you cherry picking immigrant groups?

I picked large, visible minority immigrant groups that have been in their destination country for more than a generation.

> What are the statistics for Poles, Italians, Russian Germans?

There’s far fewer of those than Turks, and many are ethnic Germans to begin with.

> The US has plenty of minority and immigrant groups for which convergence is... far from happening

There’s only two: black people and indigenous people, neither of which are immigrant groups. Economic migrants go the US, such as Germans, Italians, and Irish, all economically assimilated decades ago. Hispanics are on the same track: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353.

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

#916

Post by rayiner » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 12:58 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #771

dtheodor wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not cherry picking, he picked the largest immigrant group, twice as large as the next one

I could also pick the biggest minority group in the US, and trust me, Turks have a much better life in Germany.

The largest minority group in the US is Hispanics. White Americans have a median household income 36% higher than the median household income of Hispanics. The median income of Germans is almost double the median income of Turkish Germans.

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

#917

Post by DamnYuppie » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #906

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xenophobia and racism prevents that Huh? My understanding is the US scores lowest of any country on objective measures of both. Which country has less Xenophobia and racism? People throw out Canada often but I believe empirically that is false.

How is xenophobia measured empirically?

Probably by the ethnic distribution of the immigrants. Most of US immigrant are not white so I don’t understand your argument. Maybe only Canada has more diverse immigrants than the US.

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

#918

Post by midoridensha » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #844

pradn wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots and lots of natural resources facilitating lots of businesses which aren't really feasible in say, Germany, France, Japan. This doesn't seem to be a big factor in the boom industries in the US: tech, finance, pharma. It does matter for construction, the biggest employer. The US still seems like a more welcoming place than western Europe. Or at least you can take comfort in a suburban home and drive to people/i…

> The US still seems like a more welcoming place than western Europe. I personally know peolle that left US for UK because they found your immigration system unacceptable. If you are from india, you might have to wait 10 years to get citizenship after fulfilling all requirements. Uk immigration system itself is worse than that of France and many other countries. It costs $10,000 to apply for visas for a family of 4.…

>If you are from india, you might have to wait 10 years to get citizenship after fulfilling all requirements.

I read somewhere that the waiting line for Indian people is 180 years, not 10.

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

#919

Post by zamalek » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #826

zamalek wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an anecdote. The GP comment indicated that they have seen this across an org, meaning more than a single sample.

The plural of anecdote is not data. I use my MBP 6-8 hours every. single. day. I plug two monitors to it and leave everything on 24/7 (I only dim the screen but never close it). I'm sure I put way more use into them than the average user. I once went close to two years without a restart. No other laptop I've owned has been as reliable as the MBPs. ... but yes this is still an anecdote.

> The plural of anecdote is not data.

Of course not. An anecdote is bad data. A diverse sample is good data.

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

#920

Post by wahern » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 1:35 AM UTC

phatfish wrote: post #888

kevviiinn wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xenophobia and racism prevents that

Racism and xenaphobia of the native population has very little effect on migration if the reward for the migrants is enough. If a "developed" country wanted to stop migration they would work to raise the living standards at the source. There is less chance of that happening than removing xenaphobic behaviour from the natives however. Or the "developed" society becomes more brutal than the place the migrant are fleein…

> If a "developed" country wanted to stop migration they would work to raise the living standards at the source.

Biden at least nominally adopted such as policy. See, for example, "U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America", https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-C...

But, AFAICT, it's mostly been a quiet public-private approach that in dollar terms isn't very substantial. See, e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

If you look at Haiti, Venezuela, etc, it seems the limiting factor here is an unwillingness of the U.S. to leverage any political muscle, either domestically or internationally. I presume that's partly a consequence of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also probably because for some large factions, especially on the left but increasingly on the right, in American politics any form of involvement is unacceptable. It's almost like a radical ecological argument: the rest of the world is in a state of nature, and any intervention by an external agency is per se morally evil; the moral imperative is non-intervention, outcomes are irrelevant. Even those who don't hold this belief (explicitly or implicitly) at least understand the consequences: any perceived failure in intervention will be blamed on them, and nobody wants to face the ire of the religionists.