this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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They use ARM now, which is super efficient, the laptops last forever on battery.
If there's one thing Apple's done right, it's Apple Silicon
Huh I haven't really kept up with consumer tech for the last few years, that's interesting. Didn't they have software issues with instruction sets being different? Or does MacOS being Unix based help with that or something. I do know their mobile processors have been competitive especially in single core performance for a while so I'm sure their desktop ones are good.
But, either way they products were still 3x the price of comparable products even when they had crappy x86 Intel CPUs lol. I'm still not very convinced they're not overpriced sorry to say
They've built a translation layer in for compatibility, though it's not perfectly fast, it's more than good enough from what I've heard.
It being Unix based definitely helps, though don't doubt Apple wouldn't have been able to deal with it if that weren't the case.
The chips really shine in laptops, I'd say desktops are a bit weaker, unless you're doing something heavily optimized (Final Cut Pro f.e.).
The biggest win is energy consumption, the difference is insane, I recommend you look up a benchmark or two, can range from 2 to 10x more efficient.
I honestly don't agree though that they're 3x the price of comparable products, the new Macbook Airs are pretty solid pieces of hardware for an okay sum of money. It really depends on your workload though, if you're gaming, you're gonna have a terrible time, if you're a dev / work in the browser / do some light editing you're gonna love the battery life and perf's not gonna hold you back.
Yeah that's definitely quite interesting, it's pretty similar to what Microsoft was trying to do with putting Windows on phones I the Early 2010s. I think only really Sony ever adopted it for their phones and they never sold well, but I thought it was interesting at the time.
There's a decent amount of ARM laptops that are running Windows so maybe that it where the laptop market is heading, it makes sense because the big.LITTLE cores ARM SOCs use are specifically designed to use as little power of course. A Chromebook I had a while ago had a (iirc) Tegra K1 ARM and that had great battery life even for a Chromebook.
As far as pricing on Apple products goes I don't think you will ever convince me they're good value for money :P. Sure 3x the price of comparable products is am exaggeration, I would say it's more like 1.5 or 1.75x the price normally. I mean saying it's "good for web browsing" essentially just means it doesn't have good components but these things are priced in the range of what like $1000 right, you could get a nice chromebook that also has an ARM CPU and is good for web browsing as half the price. I'm sure MacOS on ARM is a more useful OS than ChromeOS in terms of the software you can use on it, but for most users that probably isn't even important.
I think there's a reason Apple has the largest cash reserves and of any company and the highest market cap (not sure if that's the case ATM) but they move less products than companies like Samsung, it's because they have fat profit margins. I'm not saying their products are bad, they're mostly great and some of their products are genuinely disruptive. I just think they aren't good value you know. Which is fine, they aren't really meant to be I don't think.
Windows on ARM is really incomparable to MacOS on ARM, it's like comparing a 15yos Hello World to a senior engineer's 10yo project.
Yes, for simple web browsing ChromeOS is just fine, but you can do so much more with a fullblown system. The performance is also in another league.
I honestly would say that the 16GB mbAir is good value, if it fits your use case (no gaming / heavy x86-only programs).
Don't forget Apple makes a shitton of money from services (AppStore, iCloud...), which often make a lot more money than hardware (so Sammy is at a disadvantage here).
I'm not trying to convince you the Apple's awesome, I don't think that myself either (on the contrary), but their chips just are pretty awesome
Well I never said MacOS on ARM isn't a lot better than Windows on ARM, I've heard about the issues people have had with their ARM Surface Pros.
I think for the specific use case you mentioned, being someone who needs to do more than just web browsing and needs to go without access to an electrical outlet often, while not needing to use x86 software- in that case sure if you can afford it a MacBook is good value because not really anything else competes with it.
I just see a lot of people drop $1000+ on these things and then just watch YouTube on it and edit Google docs etc lol. That is more what I was thinking of when I say they're overpriced. Those people are just buying Macbooks, and other Apple products because Apple is a very powerful brand which is why they can have relatively fat profit margins because the strong brand image makes their products' demand more inelastic. Not saying I have anything against that though. It's not like I spend all of my money perfectly rationally, everyone has different things they like to splurge on I suppose.