A MacBook is very good at what it does. If you tried to spec out a laptop/portable computer for similar tasks, the Mac would be pretty competitive and have longer battery life.
Once you try to do anything that apple didn’t intend for it to do (play games, for example) or if we turn to desktops then the value proposition goes away pretty quickly
Your computer always has been limited by the intentions of the system designer. It’s not malice, it’s market-fit and optimization.
Look at those x3d variants that amd has been putting out. Fantastic for gamers, but relatively niche for general computing tasks. If I were an OEM, would I pick those parts for my workstation prebuilts? Fuck no, they’re overpriced for someone using office and a web browser. But for my gaming line, maybe, if I could get a deal.
All computers have many of these price/performance/size/power draw/availability decisions to make, and portables even more so. Apple knows that most of their users need xyz, and they build for that. Everyone else’s needs go into the pile of lower priority, some of which will be supported if they feel like it.
If all you need is office and a web browser there’s plenty of suitable ARM systems. Handful of A72 cores, generally come with more than enough of a GPU to drive 2d, important: At least a couple of PCIe lanes for an SSD. I’m sure by now there’s more suitable systems but an RK3399 is sufficient, originally a chipset for set-top boxes (hence why it has a beast of a VPU (for its price and age) which can decode 4k h265). Bought the board for about 100 bucks back in the days, what, three or four years ago. Actually I should hook it up to a monitor and check out those fancy new GPU drivers that have been coming along, the thing is vulkan-capable (back in the days I was stuck with a gles blob, and using the VPU meant using an overlay).
That’s not apples to apples. If you spec a windows laptop, good luck getting the same performance and the same battery life and portability at the same price. Also build quality, screen, speaker and trackpad quality will likely not be at apples level from the windows machine. If that’s what you’re in the market for Apple machines are not bad. For instance a photographer/videographer working on location, truly amazing for them. Should everyone buy one? No. Are there a 100 better ways to spend the money if you don’t have that specific Apple favoured use case. Sure, e.g. your mum doesn’t need a MacBook Pro for Facebook / Amazon browsing and your cousin shouldn’t buy a Mac Studio for gaming. But use cases do exist, and for those people Macs are genuinely a good proposition.
A beefy PC that you’re going to be itching to upgrade in 2 years.
I will say though, if you’re planning on gaming then Mac is still a no go. It’s best for design and audio professionals. Average joes should just be getting a Chromebook or something.
What about all the forced apple junk? Itunes, App Store, Books, Chess, DVD Player, Facetime, GarageBand, Home, Imovie, Keynote, Podcasts, Photo Booth, Pages, Quicktime Player, Safari (which doesn’t allow you to install a decent browser), …
You really don’t get any of those things. Be a Mac fan if that’s your thing, but don’t try to pretend they’re actually any better because all the PCs you’ve used have been trash.
And I prefer touchpads and find using a mouse on Mac a terrible experience. Touchpad gestures are a constant part of my workflow on a laptop due to the nature of only having one screen.
Like I said though, Mac touchpads are miles ahead of windows touchpads and it’s not even close to a competition.
Yeah that’s probably true. Every laptop I’ve ever used that I cared about gestures on just had a touch screen. Not that I’ve ever really liked that either.
A beefy ass desktop that weights about 15kg and eats as much energy as a microwave when gaming. For performance per watt nothing beats the Apple Silicon.
What you using all that power for? Gaming? Not likely on Mac, Machine learning? Also not likely with that GPU… Maybe a Photoshop machine? Enjoy that non expandable ram.
For a nice dev machine I get it, nice battery life and watch Netflix on a screen, but it’s not like you can’t get a same performance machine for the same/lesser price with Dell/Thinkpad and use Linux…
That’s a rather narrow set of use cases. For example, they are audio and video editing powerhouses. Audio in particular is exceptional because of core audio in MacOS.
And upgradable components aren’t something 95% of the population is worried about. Max out what you need when you buy it. My last Mac lasted 8 years with no trouble. And by the time I was ready to upgrade, the bottleneck was mainly the cpu, which in a case of 8 years, that means a new motherboard, and at that point you might as well upgrade the whole computer, as standards have changed and updated.
Apple silicon has a pretty decent on-board ML subsystem, you can get LLMs to output a respectable number of tokens per second off of it if you have the memory for them. I’m honesty shocked that they haven’t built a little LLM to power Siri
The close competition? For the price of a MacBook you could get a beefy ass PC.
A MacBook is very good at what it does. If you tried to spec out a laptop/portable computer for similar tasks, the Mac would be pretty competitive and have longer battery life.
Once you try to do anything that apple didn’t intend for it to do (play games, for example) or if we turn to desktops then the value proposition goes away pretty quickly
So my all-purpose PC is now limited by the intentions of the silicone manufacturer, and therefore it’s better than the other options?
Your computer always has been limited by the intentions of the system designer. It’s not malice, it’s market-fit and optimization.
Look at those x3d variants that amd has been putting out. Fantastic for gamers, but relatively niche for general computing tasks. If I were an OEM, would I pick those parts for my workstation prebuilts? Fuck no, they’re overpriced for someone using office and a web browser. But for my gaming line, maybe, if I could get a deal.
All computers have many of these price/performance/size/power draw/availability decisions to make, and portables even more so. Apple knows that most of their users need xyz, and they build for that. Everyone else’s needs go into the pile of lower priority, some of which will be supported if they feel like it.
If all you need is office and a web browser there’s plenty of suitable ARM systems. Handful of A72 cores, generally come with more than enough of a GPU to drive 2d, important: At least a couple of PCIe lanes for an SSD. I’m sure by now there’s more suitable systems but an RK3399 is sufficient, originally a chipset for set-top boxes (hence why it has a beast of a VPU (for its price and age) which can decode 4k h265). Bought the board for about 100 bucks back in the days, what, three or four years ago. Actually I should hook it up to a monitor and check out those fancy new GPU drivers that have been coming along, the thing is vulkan-capable (back in the days I was stuck with a gles blob, and using the VPU meant using an overlay).
That’s not apples to apples. If you spec a windows laptop, good luck getting the same performance and the same battery life and portability at the same price. Also build quality, screen, speaker and trackpad quality will likely not be at apples level from the windows machine. If that’s what you’re in the market for Apple machines are not bad. For instance a photographer/videographer working on location, truly amazing for them. Should everyone buy one? No. Are there a 100 better ways to spend the money if you don’t have that specific Apple favoured use case. Sure, e.g. your mum doesn’t need a MacBook Pro for Facebook / Amazon browsing and your cousin shouldn’t buy a Mac Studio for gaming. But use cases do exist, and for those people Macs are genuinely a good proposition.
A beefy PC that you’re going to be itching to upgrade in 2 years.
I will say though, if you’re planning on gaming then Mac is still a no go. It’s best for design and audio professionals. Average joes should just be getting a Chromebook or something.
What can you do on a Mac that a cheap ass laptop can’t do?
The Mac can run MacOS. That was the point of this thread, that MacOS is less junked up than Windows.
Less junked up?
What about all the forced apple junk? Itunes, App Store, Books, Chess, DVD Player, Facetime, GarageBand, Home, Imovie, Keynote, Podcasts, Photo Booth, Pages, Quicktime Player, Safari (which doesn’t allow you to install a decent browser), …
The original post in this thread said:
I agree with that. If you don’t, that’s okay.
Guess what my response was to that? “But then I’d have to support apple trash”. Im responding to the fan bois
It’s not about not being able to do it, it’s about being able to do it well, and have a nice experience.
My $200 Thinkpad T14 will browse the web, but I get about 4 hours battery life at best doing that. My M1 MBP gets 15 doing the exact same thing.
Then you’d have a laptop twice as thick, 1/5th the battery life, be built worse, and have an awful trackpad.
You really don’t get any of those things. Be a Mac fan if that’s your thing, but don’t try to pretend they’re actually any better because all the PCs you’ve used have been trash.
I’ve yet to find a PC laptop that can replicate a Mac TouchPad. They’ve gotten better in the last few years, but are still miles off Apple.
They’re not better for everything, but some stuff they’ve absolutely nailed over the competition and it’s not even close.
If I’m honest I hate touchpads in general, even Macs. I’ve got a brand new top of the line Mac issued by my company. I use a mouse.
And I prefer touchpads and find using a mouse on Mac a terrible experience. Touchpad gestures are a constant part of my workflow on a laptop due to the nature of only having one screen.
Like I said though, Mac touchpads are miles ahead of windows touchpads and it’s not even close to a competition.
Yeah that’s probably true. Every laptop I’ve ever used that I cared about gestures on just had a touch screen. Not that I’ve ever really liked that either.
A beefy ass desktop that weights about 15kg and eats as much energy as a microwave when gaming. For performance per watt nothing beats the Apple Silicon.
What you using all that power for? Gaming? Not likely on Mac, Machine learning? Also not likely with that GPU… Maybe a Photoshop machine? Enjoy that non expandable ram.
For a nice dev machine I get it, nice battery life and watch Netflix on a screen, but it’s not like you can’t get a same performance machine for the same/lesser price with Dell/Thinkpad and use Linux…
That’s a rather narrow set of use cases. For example, they are audio and video editing powerhouses. Audio in particular is exceptional because of core audio in MacOS.
And upgradable components aren’t something 95% of the population is worried about. Max out what you need when you buy it. My last Mac lasted 8 years with no trouble. And by the time I was ready to upgrade, the bottleneck was mainly the cpu, which in a case of 8 years, that means a new motherboard, and at that point you might as well upgrade the whole computer, as standards have changed and updated.
Apple silicon has a pretty decent on-board ML subsystem, you can get LLMs to output a respectable number of tokens per second off of it if you have the memory for them. I’m honesty shocked that they haven’t built a little LLM to power Siri
With that software support…?
Or a beefy laptop that can do more than send emails and Photoshop lol