Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
So, part of that unusual demand was also customers finally upgrading their old MacBooks.
M1 generation -> M2 generation is a pretty small difference, not something you'd normally notice. In my experience unless using a stopwatch or running benchmarks folks don't usually notice improvements till they get into the 1.5 to 2x range.
I'm in the market for a new Mac. I'm currently using a late 2013 15-inch Retina as my trusty friend. If the M2 Max came with socketed SSD I'd buy it today with the 96GB RAM and max spec in every other regard, despite the price being nearly double what I paid for my current machine 9.5 years ago.
But because the SSD is soldered on, expensive and non-upgradable, and I'm always running out of space, and I want to be able to work with some large models, databases and VMs, I need to plan ahead the next 5 years in terabytes. Ensuring enough storage headroom for potential future use takes the price to a level where it's a major commitment I'll have to stick with for years, so I decided to wait and see what comes out later this year instead.
So count me as one of the potential M2 customers who was excited to get one, then after a long wait last year for the M2 MBPs to come out, and a long period of deciding which model to get after they came out, in the end decided to wait, with the unnecessarily soldered-in, non-upgradable SSDs being a factor in why.
(I have some other doubts: When I tried in store, the keyboard on the M2 MBPs is not as nice to type on compared with the 2013 model, and the trackpad is annoyingly large, and prone to triggering tap-to-touch from my hands while typing, and click-to-touch is not my preference. But those aren't bad enough to affect my purchasing decision, as long as the M1/M2 processors are still well ahead of the rest.)
I hadn't thought of it, as older USB drives (ie. my experience, 2013 MBP) are much slower for large data than the internal storage, some of my work is storage I/O performance constrained, and I don't want to carry around yet another dongle. But the price differential vs Apple built-in and flexibility/upgradability, at current USB4 speeds makes a compelling case.
(I read anout significant differences between M1 and M2 for some flavours of USB storage link speed, which might persuade me to opt for the M2 after all.)
I was supplied a decently-specced late-2019 16-inch i9 MBP for work when I started in mid-2020. Basically about the best Intel MBP that ever got released. Then the M1's came, I got a 14-inch base model M1 Pro (which I calculate to have cost about 1/2 the price work paid for my machine) and it runs circles around the work machine. I haven't run benchmarks or anything but in general performance, app startup time, even just how long it takes to redraw the desktop when I plug/unplug a monitor is night and day.
The Intel -> Apple Silicon jump is significant, but if you bought a specced out M1 Max or something, there's not going to be a reason to upgrade for a while.
I generally use an external keyboard anyway (just Apple's Magic Keyboard) but for the times I do move away from my desk it's nice to type on a keyboard where you can actually feel the travel unlike those god forsaken butterfly switches.
People keep perpetuating this myth, but the only significant jump in performance from x86 was with the Air. With all other models, it was always as Apple does with new models, and what we should have come to expect (yet we always expect more for some reason and there is always disappointment at the performance increases of new models), which is incremental performance improvements. What was amazing about M1 was that Apple switched platforms without missing a step. In general, the first M1 models where only incrementally more performant than the immediately previous x86 models they replaced, just like the M2 models are only an incremental improvement over the M1 models they replaced, and just like every new hardware release from Apple... a fractional step forward and never giant leaps and bounds. After all, that's probably impossible, as Apple's new hardware is always cutting edge at release (except for the 1999/2000 G4 tower fiasco when the processor speed actually went down for one release).
There’s this smaller device called the iPhone…
Oh yeah! When it launched, Jobs said they hoped to eventually get 1% of the phone market. How did they end up doing?
$1.00 in January 2019 is $1.20 in 2023 https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/216055/annual-percentage...
However, most of the inflation during that period came from housing, energy, vehicles, food, not consumer electronics.
2019 Q1 - 3.9m
2020 Q1 - 3.1m
2021 Q1 - 6.7m (111.5% increase YoY)
2022 Q1 - 7.0m
2023 Q1 - 4.1m
Apple experienced explosive growth in 2021Q1 over 2020 Q1 compared to other PC makers.
Lenovo (+59.1%)
HP (+64.1%)
Dell (+23.4%)
Apple (+111.5%)
Acer (+73.5%)
Where as Lenovo and HP declined ~15% in 2022 Q1, Apple managed to gain 4.5%. So compared others, Apple had more to fall.
Looking at the multi-year trend, the 2023 PC sales volume is returning to 2019 figure, except Apple.
Lenovo 13.4m (2019) vs 12.7m (2023)
HP 13.5m (2019) vs 12.0m (2023)
Dell 10.4m (2019) vs 9.5m (2023)
Apple 3.1m (2019) vs 4.1m (2023)
They're quoted in a few different publications.
2019,2020 https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/13/idc-gartner-mac-shipments-q1-...
2020,2021 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210409005459/en/PC-...
2022,2023 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS50565723
Source?
And source that they spent that income on MacBooks?
The lower class who needed those checks to pay rent and buy food did just that.
However there was a large portion of the population who did not lose their jobs and considered those stimulus checks "fun money." Many used it to purchase goods they typically wouldn't have 1k+ to spend on regularly.
Couple that with many working from home, their children going to school from home and needing a laptop, and the sheer boredom factor, I don't think it's a leap to correlate stimulus checks with a huge jump in Macbook sales given the time frame.
Again, you also have to factor in that the check was pretty much exactly what a new, entry-level (aka most popular SKU), Macbook Air would cost after taxes.
The first model hit retail at the end of 2020, and we were already way deep into the covid/wfo cycle, with people buying any laptop available at the time to cover for the transition.
In that respect, the introduction of M1 machines looks to me to happen way after the dust settled on the gov incentives front.
Depends on your location, bubble and what kind work you do. Where I live now in Europe, companies mostly provide PC laptops with with Windows (vast majority) or sometimes Ubuntu on the same machines, because the bean counters here are far too scroogy to justify to management switching the entire fleet to Macs. Also probably because it's what most IT guys here are used to managing so moving everything to Macs would mean costs the company is not willing to bear.
If by tech you only mean agile web and mobile dev shops, then yes, it tends to be a majority Mac scene, but tech is much more generic and encompasses more industries than just web-dev. If you go to traditional tech industries, banks or large enterprises, it will 98% sure be a Windows machine here with almost no choice in the matter.
Only the frontend, graphic design and mobile app guys in my current company get Macs, the backend guys Ubuntu, and all the rest Windows.
The primary reason I switched to selecting a Mac is that it is extremely quiet. The fans rarely turn on in the M1 MBP. There's no coil whine. Back while I was working in the open-plan office, I woudn't notice the noise from the machine next to me over the generally loud office environment with its air handling, people walking by, etc. But while working from home, the near constant fan noise from the Windows machine randomly spiking the CPU to 100% was maddening.
Next time I replace my personal laptop (XPS 13 9370), I'm strongly considering getting a Macbook Air. I really appreciate having a completely silent machine.
The current default is 8GB and max is 16GB. It isn’t too high even now considering it’s 2023
8GB is fine at the moment on MacOS. The standard is still 8gb for most non-performance laptops and there are legions and legions of corporate HPs and Dells with 8GBs.
I occasionally run my tech stack on a 12' MacBook with an Intel m3 processor to make sure that I haven't gone overboard with tooling, mostly to ensure international, developing country open source contributors don't have to struggle opening local servers and such on their machines.
It's when you've got two or three needlessly-heavy web "dashboards" and Gmail and Slack and Jira and Notion all eating 500-1500 MB each that 8GB starts to feel cramped.
I’ll wait a release or two before upgrading. Apple haven’t lost an M2 sale because they’ve done anything wrong, they’ve guaranteed an M3 or M4 sale because they nailed it. It’ll take a while for that success to show up in their books though.
Also, how can you patch a zero day?
In addition, Apple obsoletes Xcode for new phones quite regularly. Once the M1 was out it and working fine it was clear that support for x86 would get killed post haste.
I imagine Apple will have to accelerate planned obsolescence (maybe dropping from 7 to 5 years of OS and security updates) to make analysts happy. ;-/
More seriously, I've gotten 7+ years of use out of multiple Apple devices. Though my 2014 iPad Air 2 is probably going to be retired from the internet once iPadOS 15 security updates end.
Also I expect a minor boost for Apple if Apple Silicon based Mac Pro machines (and perhaps pro iMac models?) turn out well.
Also, when I go and finally buy one, I think I'll just won't need the maxed out version anymore, and will prioritise portability over power, so I'll pay less. Simply because of reports about how powerful M1/2 is.
It’s probably more economical to buy the air at a lower cost and replace it more frequently but I dislike the hassle of moving files (the cloud has simplified this a lot), but more recently I’m concerned about e-waste.
Apple is also struggling with supply chain, as M1 is still prominent. Another feature of this issue is that because of their parsimonious storage configuration and linkage of M2 chip and storage, upgrades are nuts - it costs as much as an iPhone to get a storage upgrade that is like $100 with commodity SSD storage.
Not anymore. They actually had to cut back M2 orders due to slow sales. Nvidia and AMD and others have also been cutting back orders for the same reason.
The consumer tech supply chain is no longer blocked like ti was during the pandemic.
I generally agree that Apple's SSD and RAM upgrades are too expensive. I'd like them to be cheaper.
However, I'd like to point out that Apple's SSDs have built-in protection against data-loss from power loss which is usually an enterprise SSD feature. Also, Apple uses LPDDR5 on their Macs which are quite a bit more expensive than DDR4/DDR5. In addition, there's some evidence that Apple's LPDDR5 is actually not off the shelf and is specialized specifically for Apple.[0]
That said, yea I think Apple is a bit stingy with SSD and RAM upgrades.
[0]https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/24gb-macbook-air-m2-ram...
Meanwhile, for actual real-world workloads, not spilling to swap (because you have enough memory) will result in real-world performance that is many times (even an order of magnitude) better. Even with Apples blazing fast SSDs.
Oh, and you can also spec a cheaper SSD because you don’t need one that can take a bajillion writes (because you aren’t treating your SSD as memory). AND the cheaper SSD will last longer too.
In short, Apple could spec cheaper components AND get better real world performance by simply shipping computers that have enough memory.
Edit: also 3% comes from shipping the absolute fasted DDR5 modules vs the second fasted DDR5.
M2 = 100GB/sec M2 pro = 200GB/sec M2 max = 400GB/sec M1 Extreme = 800GB/sec.
Most x86-64 laptops and desktops are in the 60-80GB/sec range. Some desktop or server only chip (threadripper, epyc, Xeons, a few intel workstation chips) have 150 or 300GB/sec.
400GB/sec vs 80GB/sec is quite a bit more than 3%, and is available in the mbp 14" or mbp 16".
Apple could ship cheaper memory modules with the same stupid-wide bus and achieve nearly the same performance for a fraction of the cost.
And that’s what I want. Give me 4x as much DDR4 on the same 1024 bit wide bus, and I’d be happy.
Sure it's easy to ask for 1024 bit wide memory bus, but it's not cheap. Done with the traditional x86-64 method you'll need two 280 watt CPUs (a few $k each), on a $1k motherboard, with 24 dimms, a 1kw power supply, ear plugs, and at least $10k. The minimum physical size is going to be substantial since you need two large CPU sockets (6096 pins each), 24 dimm sockets, and of course a substantial number of fans, dimms, and power supply. Even managing airflow over 800 watts or so of chips isn't going to be easy, cheap, or quiet.
Because of the above size, cost, noise, and heat it's targeted at enterprise and cloud folks with the related cost, service contract, and sales pipelines.
Or you could buy an Apple studio and hide it somewhere, you'll likely not be able to find it by listening for it.
It's a bit arguable. On Macos the well-known operation 'fsync' which exists for the sole purpose of committing files to durable storage doesn't protect files against data loss if there's power loss. You can ask for data to be committed more durably through a Macos-specific API, in which case those Apple SSDs are a lot slower than other good SSDs at doing this.
As most software uses 'fsync' to durably commit files, that stored data is not protected against power loss for some time. VMs either use the equivalent operation to implement filesystem barriers, or the very slow but more durable Macos-specific operation. Either way, these are not great SSDs for protection against data loss on power failure.
As measured by Asahi Linux folks:
"Apple's custom NVMes are amazingly fast – if you don't care about data integrity" (https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 / https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-flash-storage-in-ma... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551)
"Well, this is unfortunate. It turns out Apple's custom NVMe drives are amazingly fast - if you don't care about data integrity. If you do, they drop down to HDD performance. Thread."
"For a while, we've noticed that random write performance with fsync (data integrity) on Asahi Linux (and also on Linux on T2 Macs) was terrible. As in 46 IOPS terrible. That's slower than many modern HDDs. We thought we were missing something, since this didn't happen on macOS." [Except it does happen on Macos when the equivalant API is used.]
You answered your own question there. Apple doesn't used "commodity" SSD storage. Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade, not bottom-of-the-barrel commodity parts.
what a weaird thing to say...
So.. tell us.. where does apple get its SSD's if it is not "commodity"? Do they have their own SSD factory?
Then you write "Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade"... So like "commodity" right? Meaning others can buy "enterprise grade" SSD's and upgrade their non-apple laptops wtih them if they wanted to?
These days laptop PCs are unreliable across most brands I have tried and supplied with crapware and the operating system is hostile and forces stuff like OneDrive on you and begs you not to install Chrome.
Last 2 years over 2 devices:
Broken screen (not due to external)
Touchscreen not working
Lid came apart
Audio stops working while windows uodates pending
Laptop stopped turning on
With the latest device I got all the extended warrantees and accidental damage coverage as the pot odds made it worth paying 33% of the device price over 3 years.
Desktops are a different breed. They last forever.
Unfortunately, today’s Windows OS is spyware, especially Windows 11, so the entire OS needs to be removed, if you want a good machine which fires not constantly send usage data to the Azure mothership, or some 3rd party.
It's still here, and still solid
Maybe they are as solid as they’ve always been, but the bar has been raised and Lenovo, Intel, or Microsoft haven’t responded yet.
There are a lot of smart people working on these problems and I’m hopeful that Intel will soon leapfrog Apple and fast, fanless Windows machines with 12+ hours of battery life will be available.
That said, I think the software stack these days has more to do with it than anything. As I mentioned in another comment its entirely possible to get the power consumption of AMD laptops into the 3-4W range with a modern linux kernel, light browsing, emacs, etc. And that is largely in my case due to assuring there aren't any background tasks consuming CPU time, and running powertop --autotune, assuring inactive HW is turned off when its not being used, cpus are spending most of their time in deep sleep, etc. All stuff that the mac is basically doing out of the box (or running background tasks on low power, etc cores). While I'm getting 15+ hours out of a fairly pedestrian 65Wh battery, which is pretty amazing since the screen and assorted devices (disk, ram, etc) are probably 1-2W of the total. Now all this goes to sh*t when I start running a compiler, or other CPU intensive work, but from my experience that happens on the M1 macs as well, which can get quite toasty and kill the battery life if left building software for an hour or more. Powertop, turbostat, cpupower are all useful diagnostic tools as well as disabling stuff in the BIOS, or powering stuff off (or at least into lower power modes) via the kernel/ACPI power methods.
(presumably some of the more efficient intel might be good too if one clamps the CPU freq/etc I've just not tried one, but i'm pretty happy with a couple of their older generation i3/i5 desktop machines).
Windows used to be reasonably good, but I get the feeling the new generation (modern standby anyone?) isn't as dedicated, and hence the machine isn't forced into a S3 like mode when the lid is closed. Combined with the apparently fragmented way the OS is built means the people in charge of power mgmt can't tell the people in charge of windows defender to get bent or any other part of the platform that excessively consumes power. So that said, the P1's support linux, which means there is an option for S3 in the BIOS, flip it on, and run the windows task schduler/runon/etc features and kill anything that can wake the laptop. That should keep it from running the fans in your bag. There used to be an option in the windows power control panel to select the action for lid close too, if its still there, then set it to sleep (S3) or hibernate (S4).
It still has some of the best build quality overall, among PC manufacturers.
That is true but Apple's OneDrive equivalent thing iCloud is the same way, they even show fake red notifications on program icons to make you sign into iCloud and use dark patterns to make you use iCloud. They don't push Safari as much but they've been stagnating it on purpose across all their products to protect their App Store revenue, which is quite the turn off.
Apple's hardware can also have problems as evidenced on here and forums but overall might be better than a cheaper laptop, just like PC laptops. Anyway my two biggest reasons for not going with a MacBook were that I think a touchscreen should be a mandatory as an option in 2023(at least for tapping on links etc. if not multitouch) and being able to play specific FPS titles in a pinch(like in a hotel while traveling) which are not available on the Mac. I was able to get an OLED HDR touchscreen running at 120hz which is gorgeous.
Seriously, they just work. An M1 or M2 Macbook Air is the ideal laptop and computer for the vast majority of people. Games? There are game consoles for games, which also Just Fucking Work(tm).
Most emulators work swimmingly.
Uhh, citation needed.
You think the webkit team is just sitting on their hands because of some upper management mandate?
edit: Don't just downvote me. Provide some evidence for this take.
80%+ of App Store revenue comes from games an in app purchases in games according to the Epic trial. Those wouldn’t be web apps anyway.
Also if it were just Safari and iOS that’s keeping web apps from becoming popular, then why are companies creating web apps, iOS apps and Android apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web app?
Finally, outside of games, most revenue that flows through apps are either based on advertising or payments for subscriptions outside of the App Store. Many streaming services for instance have stopped allowing in app purchases ages ago.
But their software are barely average and services (iCloud et al) downright pathetic. Definitely much worse than OneDrive which in itself it’s not great. I mean any data I have in iCloud I assume it’s gone — I don’t even consider it a safe copy of mu data. There’s barely any transparency around it (which is actually Apple’s DNA - lack of transparency in general).
If they don't think either service is great, they can just run a local media server or use dropbox. Apple doesn't force you to use iCloud, and I personally think it's less obtrusively advertised on the OS than OneDrive. Personally.
I say this as someone who has been using a Mac as their preferred system since the late nineties.
For example message sometimes just don’t sync on some devices. Sometimes a 300MB video file is taking just forever to sync with iCloud. Hours! When everything else is working smooth on a 800mbps connection. And you cannot do a thing about it. You write a note on one iPhone and then you don’t see on another for minutes, sometimes hours, or on another Mac. I mean the list is endless. As a matter of fact there’s no versioning either in any of its services that you could verify something.
So it’s not about losing data. It’s about not knowing! Not knowing whether you have lost data, or might lose, or anything about it!
What makes it worse is Apple making every other apps that you could use instead a third class citizen on their OS. So you have alternatives but you don’t.
I do use other file sharing tools that work just fine (1Pass, Google+, etc).
What is it about Apple that inspires such absurd hyperbole from the commentariat in general?
Building on this — A good number of people who planned to buy new Macs (myself included) held off on those purchases until the M1 came out.
Call it the "Osborne Bounce" — A bit of tech is announced too early, and the anticipation reduces normal sales volumes until it's available. At that time, there's a huge spike in sales, followed by numbers being depressed because everyone already has the shiny new thing.
Something like the Osborne Effect, except Apple has the cash and product diversity to not go out of business while everyone holds on to their wallets.
The current downtrend has definitely played a role. Not online have companies laid off tens of thousands of employees they have also cut down hiring. In all likelihood these companies have excess of IT hardware inventory.
There’s also longitivtiy, my Mac from Nov 2018 is still going strong and I don’t think I’ll need to upgrade for at least 2 more years.
And finally let’s not forget the price. As good as M2 is I need to spend a bomb to get an M2 that can handle my workload. So I keep putting off the purchase.
Part of me kind of wishes I didn't though, that was a lot of money I dropped there, especially with all the layoffs (my company had their first layoff a week after I made the purchase also).
Up until the M1 transition, the macbook 15" (and then 16") were already the defacto machine for any dev in most companies. I had colleagues who had to justify they could use Dell's linux laptops.
As of now it's more of a split, with those who stay on mac, those who move to "gaming" laptops if they rely on x86 or need GPU power, linux laptops which are now fully mature, and those who moved to machines like Lenovo's yoga line or MS Surface. Basically Apple moving away from Intel, freezing the form factor while giving the middle finger to GPU intensive apps opened the door to many other options.
Really big aversion to the "phone like" OS, secret changes to the filesystem, app-store apps, increasingly intrusive phoning home and other "modern improvements"
> Global PC shipments tumbled to 56.9 million in the first quarter, down 29% from the same period a year earlier
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-shipments-fall-29-led-by-dro...
I dread our only-phone future.
The problems isn't just the form factor. It's primarily that phones and tablets are significantly dumbed down, closed, and more user hostile devices. Windows is already trending more toward the phone experience with dumbed down interfaces, forced updates, telemetry, and ads baked in and it has made it all but unusable. I want less of that, not more.
Computers need to work for, and be owned by, the user. We had that, and we're rapidly losing ground.
Also, text editor and gcc is all I ever need. How many hoops would I have to jump through to get GPL programs unprohibited on iOS?
My desktop is a dedicated workstation machine that I want to be running even when I lug my phone around the house.
You can basically s/phone/laptop above and it still doesn't quite work for me. Doing it with a phone only makes it worse.
Maybe for some it can work, it just doesn't for me. I very much prefer the concept of continuity, where I have a number of devices that I can pickup, and whatever I want to do can be carried over in a transparent way across all of them, while having each device be the best at what it is, some able to do unique stuff and some having overlaps in functionality.
I'm more afraid of laptops turning into phones, via Microsoft Store/ App Store, scary "unknown publisher" warnings, etc. It's getting harder and harder to run what you want on computers.
Will desktop and laptops become niche, or are smartphones/tablets finding a far broader and popular market?
You can grab your smartphone and even tablet while you're riding the subway/train/bus/whatever, but you would never use a desktop I'm that scenario. Same goes for the line in your supermarket, a quick trip to the restroom, during lunch, etc.
The smartphone didn't replaced the desktop. It replaced the newspaper/magazine/mobile phone
The truth of the matter is that the smartphone form factor is far more suited for a broader range of usages than your desktop/laptop, and the combination of those use patterns with technology limitations do warrant specialized app life cycles and UX patterns. Desktop/laptops are suited for entirely different use patterns.
However the masses generally don't need the level of engineering that Apple products typically feature - people have been compelled into forking out for it in order to status match with their peers (e.g. the green/blue text thing). Now times are tight, the Rolls stay on the forecourts.
(I love their design, engineering and attention to detail - Bauhaus for nerd stuff - and their mission to bring high quality to all. But I object to their walled garden, their cultishness, lack of configurability and, yes, the inordinate waste of natural/engineering resources going in to make what should be commodity devices, coupled with sucking money out of people who really can't afford it)
This analogy doesn’t make any sense: a Rolls Royce comes with a significant price premium, whereas Apple products tend to cost about the same as equivalent quality PC/Android devices, often cheaper in the M1 era, and most of the cost factors directly benefit the core function of the device whereas what makes a Rolls cost an order of magnitude more tends to be a lot of bespoke luxury details which don’t help you get somewhere faster, safer, or proportionately more comfortably. If you want a car comparison, I’d go with Audi/BMW – premium but still a mass market manufactured good which marks you as at most upper middle class.
Also, you’re not doing your argument any favors by repeating Google’s marketing push about blue/green text message colors. Green was the original color on the iPhone 1 and hasn’t changed. What did change was Google trying to make a play to get governments to bail them out of their decision to throw the messaging business to competitors like Facebook. They have plenty of pricey PR people getting paid to dissemble about that, there’s no need to contribute your time pro bono.
At some point there was a big deal being made about Google taking your data and so 'stealing your mind' (can't disagree tbh). However, in attempting to monetize your base urges, I would respond that Apple is trying to steal your soul!
(no longer any affiliation to either company, though I was in Cupertino for a bit in a previous life)
(I can agree with several other of your auxiliary topic comments)
Are you fucking kidding me?
I don't think that actually matters at all to most Apple customers. What I do think matters to most is the advertising that went into it that turned "Apple Chips" and "Apple Silicon" into phrases people actually using outside of tech circles.
They wanted one because it was new and different, regardless of what those differences were.
99% of Apple's customers can certainly recognize "it's a fuckton faster than my previous laptop" when they see it. Apple Silicon is across the board perceivably faster than any previous Macs.
People are often blown away at how fast their old machines are when they are just wiped and reloaded.
I don't have disdain for people's mental capabilities. I'm saying that for Apple fans the chance to own something that the company marketed as 'Chip by Apple' computers there's a really big draw. They've developed a market that is eager to consume their brand more than the technology itself. I don't think those people are dumb because of that, there's a lot to like about Apple's gear.
My point was rather that the technological aspects of it aren't really going to play into it as much and haven't for a long time. You could see this in the mid-90s to early 00s era Macs. People happily bought slower less capable systems because they looked good and they preferred the OS over everything else.
> 99% of Apple's customers can certainly recognize "it's a fuckton faster than my previous laptop" when they see it.
I'd actually be surprised if that were true since I don't believe the same about users of other systems either. If you eliminate the "new OS" effect I'd be amazed if it were anything above around 25%, if that.
Now, had you suggested that it doesn't heat up anywhere near as much or some other obviously perceptible thing then sure.
Docker Desktop on Windows has full support inside WSL and integrates seamlessly i.e. can access running containers on your Win install from WSL without issues etc.
One thing I have to highlight is that you shouldn't do dev from WSL inside windows folders (my main work folders are under WSL's /home). File access is very slow, If you want to do that I think you can go for WSL 1, not 2, but I won't bother honestly. Just use WSL2 and do your work on Linux folders.
For Windows I use PowerToys extensively to bring window layouts and stacking the way I want via FancyZones. It's not exactly like the window tiling managers you'll find on Linux, but it does the job well enough.
I also think “feels hostile” is the right expression. Apple isn’t hostile to OS tinkerers, but has different priorities, and doesn’t cater for them as much as they would want.
I also have a Linux workstation and I can't name anything it can do that my MacBook can't other than playing with niche technologies e.g. NVMEoF, Octane.
Even this one? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/
Their stuff doesn’t work with my AMD APU and the oppression I feel is oppressive.
Though there is one decidedly hostile decision: effing XCode Commandline Tools.
Making sure their CPU/GPUs work perfectly with e.g. Steam and making sure that game studios are able to target Apple hardware would make a lot of difference for their appeal to gamers. Steam, of course, is also starting to work in Asahi Linux as well. There is really no good technical reason why that couldn't work on Mac OS natively.
Of course the same reason that this is a good idea also means Apple won't do it because they seem to prefer controlling their software ecosystem at the cost of failing to grow it. So Metal is nice but completely useless for gaming, or indeed most consumer focused use cases involving 3D (except for the Apple sanctioned ones). OpenCL/OpenGL barely work at this point. Forget about vulkan or directx. The whole AR/VR thing is perpetually not happening at all on Apple hardware. Until such time that they choose to release some Apple branded hardware for this of course. They are also not really investing in making their AI optimized hardware work for mainstream AI developers. Etc.
Anyway, Apple could make a really nice gaming focused console based on e.g. the mac mini. Not that hard. It would not require a lot of changes. Basically beef up the Apple TV UI, make sure games actually can be ported to it, and job done. Not that hard. But as long as their OS is locked down and developer hostile, none of that will happen.
It would require Apple to stop being Apple. Give up their App Store revenue (Steam) and give up their proprietary 3D API in favor of a standard? Might as well ask for a Start button.
> Give up their App Store revenue
They are not giving up anything they currently earn, they would be adding sales of hardware and games.
They could make a deal with Steam or make their own steam and make it easy for Games to port their games to it. They could likely find some way to monetize this.
What are you basing that on? They’ve spent a lot of time talking about how optimized the hardware and software are for each other, why are you so sure that getting equivalent performance and efficiency would be easy? Consider how trash MoltenVK is compared to Metal. About the best you can say is that it technically works.
> not giving up anything they currently earn
That’s not how Apple thinks. If they cut someone else in, especially a behemoth like Steam, they’re signing away their ability to do Apple Arcade for MacOS in the future. Look at the whole Kindle vs Apple Books fiasco, they’re never going to let someone else in the pool again. They won’t even let the XCloud game streaming app on.
> never going to let someone else in the pool again
Then make a proper games platform that is easy to target for games that are already on steam.
I rather use the NeXTSTEP heritage.
When you start getting up to the models with 16gb ram/512gb disks, which I consider an absolute minimum, their price is jut too insane for many tech users.
For me 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD is kind of the minimum (I would buy 32GB RAM if I can get it for a fair price). I can get that for less than 1000 EUR as a Windows/Linux notebook with reasonably good quality. For Apple it seems to start at 2300 EUR with these specs, and that is for relatively small screen sizes which doesn't match my preference. Of course there are many more differences here, but this seems to be kind of the price floor for reasonable specs.
Please by all means provide a link.
Often when you see these sort of comparisons it's low spec screens, memory + SSDs.
All tech in Europe is costlier. Check Dell 2023 XPS lineup and compare to macbooks - it won't get come out cheaper.
If you spend 1250e you can get oled screens which are nicer then apple
https://www.coolblue.nl/en/product/904043/asus-zenbook-14-um...
Not the same. 1080 would be unbearable compared to a MacBook pro screen at 14” (3024x1964).
Edit: the oled one has acceptable resolution. I don’t see any specs on the ssd though so it may be SATA junk. The problem with other manufacturers is that they aggressively skimp in all the places people don’t look. Part of what you get for the Apple tax is some assurance that’s not happening.
So OP is right in that options are present that are cheaper and perhaps better for his use case.
edit: oled laptop comes comes with PM9A1 ssd which has 7GB reads, 5GB writes which is faster then Apple too (apple has 5GB reads, 4GB writes).
And we're not talking about a bit of money here, Macbooks with reasonable specs start at around double the cost of a better mainstream PC notebook.
Oh boy. I suppose selling a "PC" (iMac, Mac Mini, etc) at desktop prices with laptop internals isn't skimping.
Meanwhile I built a PC for 1/4 of what it would cost me to build an equivalent Mac Pro a few years ago. It still stands up to the M2 chip today. I'll probably be rocking this one for another 5 years.
PC OEMs stopped using SATA SSDs years ago. Entry-level NVMe SSDs are both cheaper and faster than SATA SSDs built around the same quantity and type of flash.
Apple M2: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=v6_cpu&q=5900HX+&utf8...
Ryzen 9500HX: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=v6_cpu&q=m2&utf8=
That's the one I have, or at least similar. It's obviously not the same as a MacBook, but the screen is a 16:10 high-resolution, though not Retina one with good quality.
People care about different things, and Full HD screens at ~14-15" is perfectly fine for many people. And you can get that for even cheaper than what I mentioned.
MacBook Pro 14: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21032882
AMD Ryzen 7: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21032882
I had an Acer with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD since 2016 for something like 850-900 Euros back then and it wasn't some high-end gaming machine. Of course this Apple machine is much better than mine, but the comparison is to highlight what insane markups Apple is charging today on SSD and RAM configs that are years out of date. No wonder their profits are so good.
Also, considering how poorly the base single channel 256GB SSD performs on the M2 machines, I wouldn't be surprised if my 7 year old Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD would actually beat it.
I just priced out an M2 MBA with ram & ssd maxed out. $2499 USD in the US and 33009kr in Sweden. $2499 is 26163kr, +25% VAT is 32705kr. So you're paying 304kr / $29 more than the US price.
I guess New Hampshire has an Apple Store 45min from Boston airport, and Delaware has one about the same time from Philadelphia airport.
So just going "what's that in dollars" either ignores the real discrepancy, or at the very least, misplaces the blame.
Also, fun fact - since I did that math 3 hours ago, SEK has changed enough to wipe out that $29. Right now, (33009 * 0.8) SEK in USD = US$2460.46, making the pre-tax price in Sweden cheaper than the pre-tax price in the US.
So if you want to do it legally you’ll have to add 20-25% to the price which no longer makes it very appealing.
Do you still have to pay if the Mac is out of the box and you have used it?
It so happens that there are databases used by the customs agents that can trace back serial numbers to countries and purchase locations.
So trying to make up a story on a random control can turn out pretty bad.
Being caught on lies where we actually bought our phones or cameras, while being controlled on the French/Swiss border wasn't that out of the ordinary.
Most of the time not at all, and then you get that one that wants to show off or had a bad day.
You can also buy a house much quicker in Europe if you find a way not to pay 50% of your income in tax… oh and that Porsche now looks quite affordable too..
Not it's not. What are you even talking about? Buying goods for personal consumption/usage and bringing them into is perfectly legal..
Unpack, put it in your backpack, boom it's your personal item.
Why would it be illegal if you just bought a single laptop for personal usage?
Environmentally I also dont like the push for minor increments every year across their range of products, and then forced 'obsolete' rating for perfectly working devices. I have a box full already thanks. I hope to use my current machine until it physically breaks, and then switch to open-hardware.
No one is expecting you to buy a new laptop every year, even if Apple does updates each year. Other people are buying new machines on their own timelines that do not synchronize with you. They are able to get the latest machine available when they are ready to buy.
Cars are updated every year but you don't feel the same pressure to update, do you?
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/09/iphones-worth-134...
https://www.republicworld.com/india-news/general-news/in-mum...
Are modern journalists and business people really so dumb to think that spike trends will continue growing?
I'm going to speculate why:
* People are going back to buying cheaper laptops due to the economy, inflation, and exchange rates. Apple suffers in this environment because they're generally less flexible when it comes to dropping prices.
* M2 was late by ~8 months (assuming they want to release a new gen every year).
* M2 Pro/Max, consequentially, was also late by 4 months.
* M2's performance increases did not knock it out of the park. No Ray Tracing support. No drastic increase in ST. Still using a node in 5nm family.
* Ideally, we should be on M3 right now.
* M1, Pro, Max were so good that people will wait for M3 or M4 to upgrade again. I'm in this camp.
* Still no MacBook SE to capture the value Walmart/Costco Windows laptop buyers
* Still no 15" Macbook Air, which will very likely become the #1 selling Mac when it's released
* RAM and SSD are expensive upgrades and 8/256 as the baseline is finally not enough.
The most frustrating thing about following Apple Silicon over the last 2 years is just how passive Apple's strategy is. Hopefully, Apple is learning a lesson here and will be more aggressive going forward. No more delays. No more holding back. Less stingy on RAM and SSD.
I can't understand where people got their idea that M2 had to absolutely be an OMG moment. That's literally what Apple has been doing since forever: release a major upgrade, iterate on it for a few years, repeat.
> Ideally, we should be on M3 right now.
M1 was released in November 2020, less than three years ago. How the hell are we supposed to be on M3 now?
That's right. That's part of the reason why sales fell so drastically.
>M1 was released in November 2020, less than three years ago. How the hell are we supposed to be on M3 now?
There is a lot of evidence that Apple wants to release a new M series every year. There were many reputable reports that suggests M2 was ready long before the M2 Air design was ready to go. Another piece of evidence is that the video files for the M2 Pro/Max suggests that they were ready as soon as October 2022. They were delayed by 4 months.
Ideally, the timeline should have been:
M1: Fall 2020 (uses A14 from iPhone 12)
M2: Fall 2021 (uses A15 from iPhone 13)
M3: Fall 2022 (probably would have used A16 from iPhone 14 but with delays to M2 and delays to TSMC's 3nm, it'll likely skip the A16 and go straight to A17 from iPhone 15).
The above timeline did not happen for various reasons including supply chain bottlenecks, delays to the M2 Air redesign, and 3nm delay from TSMC.
Maybe not so much that people were expected to get their socks knocked off once again but mostly that M1 Max/Pro are more than enough for years to come for the majority of the people that got them.
Heck, I have a M1Air and a M1Max16. I can't even max it out with my current usage. Hard to justify the slight bump for the M2 given the cost in the EU. Even if M3 would double the performance and battery life would still be a hard sell.
Marketing. Consider why Chrome and Firefox increase their major version number every release for the smallest change now.
When Intel and AMD are both bumping up their version numbers every year or two, Apple sitting on M1 for three years looks out of fashion to the simpler people.
This isn't to say Apple (nor Intel and AMD for that matter) should release new CPUs or bump the number up anyway every year, but human psychology is undeniable.
But to answer the question: Yes. "Bigger number better" is how most people compare things.
Yes, the most miniscule of minor changes is reflected with lower-level version numbers, but the major version number still gets bumped up for next to no reason other than marketing.
Amazing machines, but the price climbs like a rocket as everyone else sinks back down to earth. And AMD Ryzen mobile cpus give M a run.
I don't understand M2 at all. And I say this from an M1 Max. I had hoped that M2 was going to be as drastic an increase as the M1 was, but nope.
I have an M1 Max MBP and an M2 Air - both machines are great, I can’t tell the difference between the chips on short work loads but the M2 Air form factor is the best Mac I’ve had (15 year Mac user so I’ve got a few to compare it to)
They could have pulled off another step function, widening the path to main memory, more cache, more efficiency cores, doubled the width to the SSDs. There is about 18 months of time between front end design that goes into the next version. The chip design is cut off before everything you want to go in, goes in. That makes it into V2 before V1 has even shipped. It isn't until V3 that one gets to incorporate changes from the field into the next chip design.
Basically, I was hopeful that Apple chip dev team was going to go as hard as possible to gain distance against the competition, but they pulled the MBA maximum market extraction play but the market softened and the perf increase wasn't there. They bet wrong.
Fingers crossed M3 is the next step function.
It makes a lot of sense. 13" is a tad bit too small for students and office workers. 15" is more comfortable for productivity.
I assume that laptop buyers will focus on productivity. Otherwise, they'd just use their iPads/tablets for media consumption.
Why would one assume that?
* M1 used A14. M2 used A15 (even though A16 was already out). This seems to suggest that Apple wants to make use of every A series iteration. The A series gets a new gen every year.
* It seems to make sense business-wise that the base M will at least get upgraded once a year. It isn't too much more effort since the iPhone funds most of the development. The base M chip goes into the following: Macbook Air 13", Macbook Air 15"(expected to come out in a few months), iPad Pro 13", iPad Pro 11", iMac, Mac Mini, iPad Air. It's valuable to update these devices once a year.
* We weren't in "normal" years. Covid, supply chain issues, work from home, gigantic demand followed by demand collapse like contributed to delays.
[0]https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/apple-execs-on-m2-chips-wi...
Apple had problems but not much they could do. There were "delays" at TSMC. There was talent loss e.g. with some members moving to Nuvia (now acquired by Qualcomm).
M2 ideally could have been much better but it was out of their hands.
Wouldn't call it passive.
This is me. I was dominating a 13" mbp m1 base model in startup mode for almost two years. I only upgraded to a 16" mbp m1 base model for the larger screen and higher refresh rate. The moment they release m3 or m4 or whatever without the display notch and even more improvements, I'll upgrade.
I'm fully expecting both my 13" and 16" m1 machines to still be almost as productive as I need them to be in a couple years...but this alien technology deserves to be purchased.
I have a lot of old MBPs accrued from past jobs that "just work". I can do almost everything I need to do with them, even most development tasks. So given the choice between a new laptop and an old one, the new one is really just a luxury. If my finances are tight, I'm definitely not getting a new mac if I can make do.
Naturally, I wanted to reccomend them to people (many less technical) getting frustrated with Windows machines. The M2s were at least 40% more expensive.
This is really not more complicated than this. Their pricing model was wrong. I genuinely would have sold and upgraded if they were priced similarly. But 2020 M1s didn't decay in price at all over 2 years. So what else could they do?
If they had reduced the M1s and M2s, they would have sold an extraordinary amount of computers.
If Apple provided a way to use Mac minis to serve as distributed compile caching and distributed build tool, I'd have a reason to buy some.
Also, mac minis are expensive when compared with other miniPCs in the market. There are some ryzen5/core i5 systems with 16 and 32GB of RAM shipping with Windows 11 being sold right now on Amazon for 300-500€. If all you want to do is run stuff in a browser and do work then you'd be hard pressed to find a reason to buy a Mac mini, let alone a Mac studio.
I bought a late-2013 13" MBP when starting university in 2014, used it all the way through to graduation, and didn't upgrade from it until the 14-inch Pro came out in 2021. Even then, it was still a passable machine for a lot of non-demanding workloads, but it no longer had software support and I'm a nerd that wanted to try the fancy new Apple Silicon for myself. I think my sister got like 8 or so years out of her 2010 MBP as well.
Macs have had good, long lifespans before this too (with exceptions for some budget configurations that were questionable value at the time of purchase)
The hardware is great, I'm just not convinced that the price/performance delivers a big enough market.
As another poster said, I bought a M1 Max, 64gb when they came out and it still feels new speed wise. Unless something breaks, this computer should last a really long time.
Regardless, other laptop vendors have mostly caught up in performance anyway. Mobility might have a better case to be made.
And no other laptops vendors haven't caught up. Their efficiency is still way lower.
Folks who know how computers work tend to subliminally optimize it, knowing when go quit apps, how to manage windows, patience with processes that logically take extra time, etc.
It’s the neophytes and dilettantes that run all their apps at the same time, have dozens of windows with hundreds of tabs open all the time, and are prone to freaking out when their system “beachballs”.
I coaxed my CEO — a business guy who happens to be in tech - into getting the M2 Air, watched a lot of his frustrations melt away. Between all the performance and battery life, it was a slam dunk. Meanwhile, I was running “compile workloads” on a wimpier 8gb M1 Air and sailing!
Sigh, seems like I'm a dilettante.
Give it a few years. Browsers and apps will expand to fill the available performance, as they always have.
With my M1 the fan rarely spins up at all and the efficiency/battery life makes a massive difference.
Think of it as an investment. If it's tour personal laptop, you can buy a maxed-out M1/M2 and use it for the next decade (while throwing random shit at it like the occasional video editing, or streaming, or a side project...)
All of them; the battery life of an M1/2 Macbook should be the minimum bar that all other laptops should strive to meet, let alone beat.
I recently started a new job, and the boss asked me to buy myself a laptop. I without thinking much asked "what's the budget, about a thousand?" He said gently, "Uh try for 600... Check out Lenovo."
I've now got a kick-ass Lenovo upgraded with lots of RAM and SSD disk for 600.
> Apple Has Procured TSMC's Entire First Run of 3nm Chips
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/343291-apple-has-procu...
I think lower sales are a result of the previous pandemic purchase spike, along with the M1 upgrade spike, in addition to people holding off due to the imminent release of 3nm chips.
In fact, I'd rather being inclined towards n-1 node and not take the risk of being first for high volume manufacturing for a new node.
It's a bit odd to want a SOC with reduced power usage and/or improved performance?
> Compared to TSMC's N5 manufacturing technology, the company's N3 production node promises to deliver a 10% to 15% performance improvement (at the same power and transistor count), reduce power consumption by 25% – 30% (at the same frequency and complexity), and increase logic density by around 1.6 times.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-kicks-off-3nm-product...
IMO, Apple asking $600 for a pc with 8GB RAM and 256 GB storage is too much. i rather build a desktop based on what i want in the PC.
I hope this sales downturn does not induce Apple to stop supporting older hardware.
I think MBPs great devices - for my employer to purchase, but as an individual they’re just too expensive now.
Oh, and a new iPhone.
It's ridiculous.
early 00's Macs were overpriced BUT they had the die-hard Apple fans which were mostly professionals with high income, then by the late to early 10's Macs were actually inline or cheaper than PCs ( and much better ), but in the last ~5-6 years the prices have been higher and higher to the point a large portion of their newly found market are being squeezed.
I imagine those people are not buying PCs in droves, but they are certainly holding to their older hardware.
We need to look elsewhere for an explanation.
They are out of the market now for what they were expecting, obviously they are still selling products.
Could argue that's because macOS is being neglected as it's slowly being replaced with iPadOS. Could argue it's just what happens with converging to an optimum. Either way outside of video editing - and perhaps AI dev - upgrading from last gen pro Intel and m1 doesn't feel very compelling at the moment.
no, I don't think this is the deal (though the lack of the 27" has affected my hardware buying decisions for our lab), just re-registering my complaint.
maybe it'll signal them that people don't like their walled garden
Historically, I've seen the term "PC" used to refer to Windows machines (not that it made much sense.) Has the term "PC" been generalized to also include Macs now?
For instance, the TRS-80 was not an "IBM compatible PC", but was advertised as a personal computer. When these terms were new, they weren't yet technical jargon with subtle meanings. "Personal computer" meant simply a computer intended for personal use.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/tech-tips-and-tricks...
Mac* vs. PC: Choose What’s Right for You When it comes to the choice between a Mac or PC, selecting a device that offers the features and flexibility you need is what matters most.
Another example: https://woz-u.com/blog/pc-vs-mac-whats-best-for-you/ PC vs Mac: What’s Best for You? By Woz U|August 4th, 2022|Woz U
With the idea being, "a PC is that old thing you've been using that constantly causes you grief. We're selling you something in an entirely different category."
I feel that everything is just a little harder and slower in MacOS vs Windows - one very obvious and memorable problem is the massive installation times for OS updates. Overall, as a result of a number of annoyances here and there, I'm less productive with a Mac despite its great hardware.
When prompted I just pick "Later" and my Mac updates at night. Automatically. When I'm not using it so unless it was going to take longer than the time I'm going to be sleeping, update length is a non-issue.
jez... this is actually good news.
But all that is linked, the sane way out of this are risc-v based systems with _LEAN_ open source (hence excluding the current "web"). We could even push to "open source" performant risc-v design.
There is worse though: video game consoles and locked smart phones.
It sounds like you imagine all compute devices should be generalized compute platforms. Which IMO is as silly as demanding all products containing wood and metal rods should function as abacuses.
Free compute is not a value adding feature in a product unless the main feature of the product is general computation.
Adding compute capabilities to products often makes them better, but it does not mean the platform should invite free tinkering.
I don’t want to tinker with my phone. I want it to be able to function as a phone.
That said of course we all want vendor-agnostic compute platforms to exist, and the world is so much better because we can use Linux if we choose.
But the idea all devices with CPU should be open is a non-value adding one.