power users come and go.
general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority
who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM?
only people with lots of money to waste.
general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority
who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM?
only people with lots of money to waste.
Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 years old. It was very expensive when I bought it, but the "cost per hour" has actually been quite low. The benefit of a better experience during the entire duration of usage is well worth the added cost, in my experience.
It's so funny see Mac fans argue about everything and its contrary that it's worth the obvious down votes.
I think the word durable has more of a connotation of being resistant to damage rather than meaning "able to be used for a long time".
WOW that's kind allot TBH.
That's my point.
Some people would.
Quoting myself
people with lots of money to waste.
Does that mean that Apple is Winning over the power users (that) generally precedes larger adoption?
Absolutely not.
Anyway: spending less for the same output is better than spending more for the same output. At least make it scale linearly.
Apple HW doesn't equal double productivity, hence double price is not a price that will appeal general population, but only **some people**
It's not a critique against Apple M1, only to the assumption that a good enough CPU will make wonders on the market.
It won't.
But if you're not currently into the Apple ecosystem, and consider going all-in, the total costs of ownership are indeed a bit eye-watering for those without six figure jobs, if you disregard or don't need or don't care about the whole ecosystem and just look at the specs to price ratio of the laptop on it's own (I got a 13 inch QHD thin and light laptop with an 8 core Ryzen 5800U and 16GB RAM and 1TB NVME removable!!! SSD and 8 hour battery life for 750 Euros, where I can dual-boot Linux and Windows and run absolutely any (non-Apple)SW I could ever need).
So, since I don't need any component of the Apple ecosystem, I can't justify spending double the money to get more limited functionality in return, though I am tech savvy enough to use Windows and Linux and create for myself a similar (and subjectively better) ecosystem to Apple's for cheap/free using various OSS and proprietary SW.
However, lost of doctors I visit and most high-earners I know seem to own Macs and iPhones, so for them most likely it's worth the extra penny for the magic of the ecosystem where everything Justworks(TM) and they don't have to spend extra time learning and fiddling with tech related stuff they don't care for.
And TBH, if I didn't have to worry about money, and didn't have a career and hobbies that required the need to run X86_X64 binaries and Android apps, then I'd probably go all-in on the latest Apple MacBook Pros with extra-ports plus iPhone ecosystem for the convenience and time savings.
My sister bought a Lenovo thinkbook with a Ryzen 7, 16 GB of RAM (upgradable up to 32) for € 729
My 3D artist friend an Asus ROG 14 with an NVidia GPU and 32GB of RAM for € 1.780 and he's using it to render complex scenes.
Does the increase in performance justify the ridiculous price?
It doesn't, in my opinion.
Also, Apple doesn't want to be a mainstream company, their market is never gonna be huge, premium prices are only justifiable if the product is somewhat exclusive.
Dell XPS and HP Elitebooks often meet or exceed the price of comparable MacBooks.
How many times people said that the Air is the "entry level" "low budget" Mac?
Which one is true?
Is it a luxury product or an entry level one?
I can quote many comments saying both things in the same thread.
Anyway, no company pays Lenovo full price and their discount policies are far more aggressive than Apple's.
There's a reason: Apple doesn't undersell, they don't care.
Lenovo, Dell, HP make volumes, they don't care to be a luxury brand.
The X1 carbon, paid full price, is for people who have money to waste.
Obviously: Both.
The absolute "entry" point is the Mac mini.
The MacBook Air a low spec "luxury" quality device for people who want a well built laptop (that has decent battery life and a good screen) but do not have heavy demands on performance.
If your argument is discounts then I don't support that pricing model (unpredictable frenetic oscillation) anyway.
And, yah, if you're a company you get a flat rate discount based on volume with Apple products.
I have a MacBook from 2011 that works perfectly well (almost as good as the day I got it, save the battery and a few bits of corrosion on the edge of the front where your palms rest). I’ve definitely cycled through other laptops much faster than that.
I spent on them a fortune in total, and they broke, pathetically.
I tried, believe me.
Mac HW quality is just another myth.
Luxury is never cheap.
An M1 can't be both entry level and better than high end models at the same price tag, at the same time (that's what they say).
They are not in fact.
Please leave Ferrari alone, they actually make cars that last for decades.
Apple doesn't.
You’re having an emotional reaction to a brand and a product, and this is not ideal.
I struggle to deal with people who are emotional about brands, both love and hate because I find that there’s no room for objectivity or discussion. There are circumstances where interacting with a brand can be wholly toxic (Oracle) or largely good (Linux, if you can call it a brand). But when you only respond in an emotional way it prevents an intellectually curious discussion.
Stop thinking of these as “Apple” computers and instead look at them as.. computers.
It makes the trade offs a lot more obvious when you remove the emotive element.
> An M1 can't be both entry level and better than high end models at the same price tag, at the same time (that's what they say).
I have no idea what you’re referring to. Apple has some laptop models that are less expensive, I might even say cheaper, than others. That’s just comparing them relative to other Apple products though. The MacBook Air is cheaper than a MacBook Pro, that’s not the same thing as saying it’s objectively cheap relative to laptops generally. These are the entry level products in the MacBook product range.
You can get capabilities from even the low end M1 MacBooks that you can’t get from even very expensive notebooks from other manufacturers. You can get faster notebooks elsewhere, or lighter notebooks, or… actually no, you can’t get notebooks with better battery life anywhere else. However you can’t get the combination of lightness power and battery duration of even a low end M1 MacBook anywhere else at any price. That can absolutely make it better than more expensive models from other manufacturers in ways some people find very important.
Yes. Yes they can. Because that's their new entry model in the new line-up. And can be both entry level and better than high-end models from the previous line-up.
These are entry models for Apple products. So no sense comparing them with entry models for other products (which could be shoddy plastic netbooks for all those brands care)
Not to mention the unusable trackpad and keyboard, and the lack of video camera. Or even the fact that this machine gets super hot and loud, while an air doesn't even have fans.
M1 Macs can't do what that laptops does.
Simple as that.
People are not stupid, that might surprise you, but people use their money for the best, usually.
> Not to mention the unusable trackpad and keyboard
Have you ever heard of a device called "mouse"?
My friend uses another device entirely, it's called "WACOM CINTIQ PRO TOUCH 32"
because he cares about eronomics in his job, specific to his job, he doesn't need to show off with his friends.
> and the lack of video camera
are you familiar with the concept of a working machine?
> Or even the fact that this machine gets super hot and loud
have you ever thought that people don't care about it, because they are working and their job is not making less noise possible?
that's a feature only if your job requires absolute silence, rendering at X minutes per frame is not one of them.
People just don't care.
It's like saying that your washing machine is noisy.
Do you stare at it while it washes your underwear?
And vice versa. Try using it for hours just on battery.
>Have you ever heard of a device called "mouse"?
Then you can't use it on your lap, need a bigger desk, etc.
>are you familiar with the concept of a working machine?
Are you familiar with the concept of online meetings ? Or do you work as a hermit ?
>because they are working and their job is not making less noise possible?
Not to mention audio people that do require that, but I'm sure your coworkers wouldn't appreciate the fan noise blasting each time you unmute
>Do you stare at it while it washes your underwear?
Do you leave the room when using your computer ?
Meh, my Ryzen laptop, while not M1 level, handles performance, heat and battery just fine for my needs, considering it costs well under half the price of an equivalent M1, and, as a major necessity for me, is easier to repair/upgrade but most importantly, it runs both Windows and Linux plus all X86 binaries I could ever want natively and I have full control over it (on Linux at least), instead of the manufacturer dictating what I'm allowed to run on it.
M1s are great but they aren't the magic silver bullet that solves everyone's problems, as I have no use for benchmark topping chips that can't run the SW I use. <shrug>
*if replaced every year ... or a 900 usd computer if replaced every 3 years.
many
I don't see many old macs around, because they're harder and more expensive to repair.
> if replaced every year
that's a big if.
The assumption is that Pro market will drive general adoption.
It's a false premise.
Pro market, especially Apple Pro market, it's predictive of exactly nothing.
I find that hard to believe. You're claiming plastic race-to-the-bottom laptop pc makers are building machines that last as long as all aluminium premium Macs? Fat chance.
Re the software issue, yeah, that's a pain. I do plan on putting Linux on it when I replace it with another Mac laptop, probably a M1. But that just furthers my point that Apple makes the best, longest lasting hardware.
But to each their own.
I'm not saying that, at all.
I am saying that people keep reasonably priced hardware for longer than Mac owners because they don't have money to waste and can actually repair and upgrade them for cheap.
Hah. It is actually. Apple releases the MacBook Air... what does the PC market do in lock step? Try to copy it. We can thank Apple for insisting on SSDs in the laptop for all our PC laptops having them. When Apple moves industries follow. That won't be like that forever but it is currently.
Apple removed CD drives and Ethernet ports: everyone does.
Apple removes HDMI, many do.
Apple removes headphone jack from phones: everyone mocks, the follows.
Just anecdata, but from walking through German trains, I disagree. I still see non-Retina MacBook Airs on some trays, for example, last sold in 2015.
Some Mac models are clearly more reliable and maintainable than others, see the butterfly keyboard fiasco. But I think companies should be judged by their better products, not the duds.
Therefore I am more comfortable buying something that, while not the fastest in the world at topping benchmarks, is plenty fast enough (faster than anything Apple ever made pre-M1 which many users still use just fine), fits my needs better, is easier to repair/upgrade, and as an added bonus, is significantly cheaper than an M1, so I can take the difference in money I would have spent on an M1 and buying into the Apple ecosystem and put it into Apple stock and I'd be even better off in the long run :)) Everybody wins.
This is solved by the M1, that’s all I say. Your laptop is still much more expensive than a significantly better desktop PC.
Online reviews show multiple laptops with near full-day battery life (>8h) exist if you do some googling, so that's almost a non-issue ATM if that's your main concern.
>Your laptop is still much more expensive than a significantly better desktop PC.
Of course it is, but so what? I need a laptop, not a desktop.
7 cores GPU / 16GB RAM / 256GB SSD 1.359 euros
https://i.imgur.com/udZSqAz.png
8 core GPU / 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD 1.629 euros
https://i.imgur.com/QacUu2X.png
I'm not saying it isn't the price people will pay, I'm only saying it's a price point that will convince people to upgrade, but won't allow Apple market to expand in a meaningful way.
Apple had already a boom years ago, I still remember Peter Jackson editing LOTR on set with his MacBook Pro + Final cut.
Then Apple stagnated and studios replaced their Macs with PCs.
Now maybe they will buy Macs again, it's a cycle, it's the same market shrinking a little and expanding a little over time.
Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives.
> Pro Macs are not iPhones, there are countless alternatives.
I have a very different reading of the market.
I don't think iPhones are priced competitively. They are not really better than Android phones which are far cheaper. That's why they have such a ridiculously low market share in Europe.
The Macbook Air is competitively priced however. Its price is in line with the rest of the market and it is a good cost to value offered proposition.
Phone market share in Europe[1]:
Apple 35.42%
Samsung 30.81%
Xiaomi 11.71%
edit: some other sources have it Samsung 32%, Apple 28% and yet others Samsung: 30% and Apple: 22%, but either way hardly "ridiculously low"
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe
It's not disastrous but it compares poorly to the between 55% and 65% of the USA market.
So I would also guess the number of people willing to buy one of these is pretty high. I purchased the MacBook Air and love it. So fast, so quiet. Could I afford it? Yes. But I also typically use a Mac for 5-7 years so I did not consider it overly expensive.
I work as a platform engineer, code mostly in Go and Python, run VMs and containers as well as some crappy resource-hungry apps like Slack and Signal all day long, and have never felt the need for more RAM on this machine.
YMMV, of course, but 16Gb on an Apple Silicon machine takes you a lot farther than you would imagine. I have co-workers who go by daily with 8Gb M1 machines.
This is running Linux rather than macos though, but it shouldn't really matter. I do have loads of web junk loaded. (Slack, Gmail, Gcal, YT music, Fastmail, plenty of browser tabs)
E.g I still have my old MacBook around for running Ableton, because support for pro audio on both Windows and Linux is not great. Linux is almost there with PipeWire support landing in most major distros, but Windows still requires a lot of fiddling with drivers and random EXEs downloaded off the web to get a reasonable setup going. And I'm not even an audio professional, just a hobbyist with very mainstream hardware.
I suspect a lot of media/design/film professionals are in the same boat. Not to mention software developers who want a smoother experience than Windows/Linux can give them. This has always been Apple's market and they don't care about anyone else.
My 7 years old Lenovo laptop mounts 64gb of RAM and 2 1TB ssds.
It costed less than a Mac M1 Pro 7 years later.
The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is.
I could understand 20% more, but not two times.
Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs.
That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market.
They simply will never be mainstream.
My answer was to
I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead
I would!
CPU alone doesn't sell notebooks to non-tech people on a budget
Depends on where.
In Italy it's absolutely not true.
I am a consultant for an Italian University in Milan.
I see a lot of Chromebooks, people don't have 1.500 euros to waste on a laptop + rent + food.
Many students ask me what they can buy with their budget, that, on average, is far below a thousand euros.
But only sacrificing something else, like screen, battery life and/or build quality.
I bought a M1 Pro, not primarily because of its performance, but because it was the cheapest way to get the performance I wanted without sacrificing battery life or build quality in a hardware/software package I could trust to Just Work out of the box.
Also I just don't trust Windows laptops to go to sleep properly when I shut the lid. With both high end Dell and Lenovo laptops I've on more than one occasion pulled out a scorching hot laptop with a dead battery out of my bag. Never had a Mac do that. It may be a small thing, but I'm willing to pay a pretty decent premium to never have that happen again.
Plus there's the fact that something almost certainly won't just work if I try to install a *nix based operating system on it.
edit: Oh yea another big one, with the Mac I get a trackpad good enough that I don't feel the need to carry a mouse.
It still doesn't have anywhere near as good battery life as a macbook, and while the CPU is fast, it's slower than the M1.
Yeah! I feel like I have been needing a word for that for sometime.
Never had a mac, but surprisingly I have the same exact experience with my IT_managed_Dell+Windows+Antivirus vs my 6yo thinkpad with linux (even months of uptime)
even plain process spawning from powershell is slow, that AV is just hell.
A beautiful high-resolution display and half a day's battery life, primarily. Also the ROG Strix trackpads are truly awful, but YMMV on that front
Heat, battery life, fan noise, etc have been discussed to death so I'll gloss over those. Past that, the other huge thing is the screen:
62.5% sRGB coverage is a really garbage color gamut. Supposedly the "G513IM-HQ088R" gets you a DCI-P3 screen but I literally can't find that model available for purchase anywhere to check what it costs.
1920x1080 vs 3024x1964 is about 1/3 the pixel count of the 14" Mac. Or compared to the 16" 3456x2234 it's about 1/4 the pixel count.
Who knows when a random driver stops working due to a kernel patch.
Or branding...
Which I can accept.
Which I can accept.
As could I, easily. As long as that was all I was sacrificing.
Their products aren't twice as expensive, their upgrades might be (RAM, iPhone storage) but the base models aren't very expensive if you compare it with "closest to comparable" competitor models.
>I would!
>CPU alone doesn't sell notebooks to non-tech people on a budget
You’re quite right. If you restrict your market segment of interest to budget products and overall market share, that’s Macs out of the picture before you even start. Apple does not care, at all, about the budget end of the market. It’s irrelevant to them.
Looking at the premium segment, and the market dynamics are completely different. The majority of retail laptops costing over $1k sold are Macs. They also enjoy about tripple the market share among university students that they have in the general market, although that varies greatly by country. The result is that Apple captures roughly 60% of the profits in the desktop/laptop computer market globally.
Aiming for market share would mean accepting much lower profit margins. That’s something they’re just not interested in.
>The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
So, really, what this is saying is that a brand new, constructor specific 5nm SoC that is tailor made with a CPU/memory quasi-direct link is about equal to a year and a half old 7nm CPU, while being twice as expensive. As much as the Apple fanboys can scream about pOwEr EfFiCciEnCy!1, making up a $1500 difference just in electricity costs is going to be hard. Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.
Confused. The MacBook Pro is also available from $2500.
I see you subscribe to the John Hodgman school of laptop design.
Counterpoint: battery life and, for the first time in my life, being able to treat my laptop as actually portable and not have to carry a power brick and mouse (because other touchpads were so terrible) everywhere is the main thing that sold me on Macs, initially, after ~15 years of my computing life being totally Mac-free.
It sold me fast. Turned me from "pft, Macs, OK, whatever, they're nothing special" to "huh, maybe there's something to this" to "I'm never buying anything but a Mac again until competitors can match [list of features I now wouldn't want to give up]" in like a month.
Sadly, no other vendors seem close to closing that gap. Macs remain a category of their own. Not a great situation.
It isn't.
A wholeful lot of working people need a computer, a phone is not enough.
A laptop that has top notch battery performance and can handle heavy work at the same time, being also very lightweight, has a lot of pluses.
The fact that it is well built and that it is battery efficient is, that alone, sort of an insurance policy. I can see many occasions arising in a timespan of some years where a professional could lose a lot of money if its main work device proves to be unreliable at a wrong moment. It might be more than those 1500 euros depending on the field.