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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

For me 60Hz on the base model is now a deal breaker. Even our daughter's 300 Euro A54 has a 120Hz screen (though not LTPO). Once you are used to 120Hz on a touch device, it's hard to go back (different on a relatively static computer screen, where I prefer having the high DPI of 5k 27"). So, it's iPhone Pro models until the base model gets >60Hz too.

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I’ve actually come to the conclusion that a laggier worse phone display is a feature, not a bug. Quicker response times = more addictive with little to no upside in productivity.

meh. thats like saying worse tasting food is healthier because you eat less.

That’s not wrong, look at America, very tasty food and very unhealthy people. In Switzerland the food is no where near as tasty and the people are healthier and in better shape.

Relatively, yes. Obesity is still a problem in Switzerland and over half the men are overweight.

I don’t know what Switzerland you are talking about, only 12% of the population is considered obese so I don’t see how over half the men here are obese.

America doesn't have a monopoly on particularly good food.. We have a lot of junk and fast food and cities that are only usable by car which I think are the real issues.

You and Apple’s marketing team have come to the same conclusion.

Sent from my iPhone 15 Pro

I understand 60 Hz being “a deal breaker” for gaming and VR applications, but on a battery-constrained mobile phone that I carry everywhere? No thanks. I’d rather have more battery life or less weight in my pocket. 60 Hz is more than adequate.

Isn't the difference minimal, particularly with LTPO that can go down to 1hz? Of course this is assuming you aren't gaming at 120hz but rather doing more casual tasks.

Surely that's a joke, what special need could possibly call for requiring more than 60fps (calling it a dealbreaker)? It's nice to have but... it's like having a slightly faster CPU or cellular modem that lets pages load 2ms faster, sure it's nice but... a dealbreaker? Why?

I'm pretty sure what OP meant is "once you try high refresh rate, you can't go back". I had the same feeling many years ago as an android user. And more recently after switching to an OLED monitor.

I read that sentiment often. But I am able to switch between my 60 Hz iPhone 13 and 120 Hz iPad Pro without issue. iPad Pro switches from 120 Hz to 60 Hz when low power mode is activated. I notice the switch but I easily adjust and not think about it.

Well. I used to think the same but I found myself got used to the 60hz display within a week again. It's true it's annoying for the first few days but you know, mankind is an adapting animal.

Same as the 8GB Macs, ridiculous.

> Same as the 8GB Macs, ridiculous

My mom doesn't need more than 8GB RAM. Overengineering is still bad engineering.

I generally find the opposite. Experts know how to deal with limited memory. They benefit from more but they understand the tradeoffs. Non-experts get all kinds of bad experiences not realizing the issue is their machine is underpowered.

Maybe 8GB ram is enough for your mom but know lots of non-techies suffering with underpowered machines.

> Non-experts get all kinds of bad experiences not realizing the issue is their machine is underpowered

As always, it depends on how the machine is being used. The encompasses both intent and habits.

Someone who will install ad-spam toolbars will chew through all the memory in the world. That doesn't change the fact that they're largely using their device to e-mail, read news and occasionally open a spreadsheet.

The people I've seen with underpowered machines, wait 5 minutes for them to boot since they are both slow (celeron) and low-mem (so swapping 10-15 times while booting). They they take minutes to launch apps (like open a spreadsheet).

It doesn't matter than they're only using their device to e-mail, read news, and occasionally open a spreadsheet. In fact, reading news is arguably a memory and perf hog. 100s of large images, plus video, etc... taxes any low-powered/low-memory machine. It's bad enough on a fast machine that doesn't slow down but is still covered in ads on the news page. But it's horryfing on an under-powered/under-memory machine.

swapping on an m4 with a midrange pcie 4.0 SSD is quite different from swapping on a celeron with a low-end SATA SSD or spinning rust, plus linux/unix/macos is generally much better with swapping sensibly than windows.

believe it or not, an 8GB macos device is generally quite usable even if it's swapping, as long as it's apple silicon family. yes, it's not going to save if you if your working set is more than 8GB and you need everything in the set, but chrome/firefox do not actually need the 32gb you are probably giving them.

Yes but an 8gig Mac cost $999. A 8gig windows box costs $249

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Students-Business-Quad-Core-Storag...

Grandma, on a fixed income, buys the $249 machine.

Might have been true 5 years ago, but I don't think this is true now. Base systems with nothing open are using 3+ gigs of memory. Web pages use a ton, but even fairly standard apps will use a gig or more (thanks, electron).

The end result is super slow loading as stuff is swapped, apps crashing (at least on Windows), tabs reloading when you don't want them to.

> Web pages use a ton, but even fairly standard apps will use a gig or more (thanks, electron)

She does most of that on an iPad. The computer is used for e-mail, filling out government forms and looking at spreadsheets. She needs a sturdy machine that works, simply, and doesn't need a lot of babying. A cheap, well-configured Mac running Safari with an ad blocker is just about perfect for that.

Using Excel with 8 gigs of ram is really pushing it.

> Using Excel with 8 gigs of ram is really pushing it

Just pulled it up on my (16GB) Mac. 300 MB.

Note that she's manipulating, like, a spreadsheet for the rotary.

This is a joke, I think.

It is a joke, right?

No, because your OS is using 4 gigs to sit idle. And then your chat app is using another gig to do nothing.

Plenty of people simply don’t see it though. That’s what apple is betting on.

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