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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

In the 90s, you probably wouldn't want to be using a desktop from 4 years ago, but the M1 is already 4 years old and will probably be fine for most people for years yet.

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No kidding. The M1 MacBook Pro I got from work is the first time I've ever subjectively considered a computer to be just as fast as it was the day I got it.

I think by the time my work-provided M1 MacBook Pro arrived, the M2s were already out, but of course I simply didn't care. I actually wonder when it will be worth the hassle of transferring all my stuff over to a new machine. Could easily be another 4 years.

Funny that we can buy renewed Intel Macs for less than $200 and do exactly the same.

...until the battery runs out hours earlier.

Or your lap gets hot. Or the fans drive you mad. Good luck with the available ports. Oh, it’s slow AF too, but if you get the right model you can use that stupid Touch Bar.

Where can you get Intel Macs for $200?

I bought an Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro for a friend that I’m working with for $200-$250 from woot.com.

Amazon. Search for "renewed".

Thanks. Are these the same as Apple refurbished (as in completely reskinned with a new genuine battery)?

Maybe the desktops, but the laptops were always nigh-unusable for my workloads (nothing special, just iOS dev in Xcode). The fans would spin up to jet takeoff status, it would thermal throttle, and performance would nosedive.

The M1 Pro was a revelation.

There was a really annoying issue with a lot of the intel MacBooks where due to the board design one of the two power sockets would cause them to run quite a bit hotter.

Yeah I remember that, I posted a YouTube video complaining about it 6 years ago, before I could find any other references to the issue online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rox2IfViJLg

That would cause it to throttle even when idle! But even on battery or using the right-hand ports, under continuous load (edit-build-test cycles) it would quickly throttle.

Oh yeah, I'm very aware. My work machine was a 2015 MBP until about 6 months ago. It was really bad towards the end.

Congratulations on upgrading away from it!

Apple's marketing is comparing this season's M4s to M1s and even two generations of Intel ago. The 2x or 4x numbers suggests they are targeting and catering to this longer cycle where subliminally suggested updates are remarkably better, rather than suggesting an annual treadmill even though each release is "our best ever".

Yeah they did this last year and before. It’s super annoying. I’d say it’s super stupid, but I’m sure from a marketing point of view it isn’t.

I was going to say why not compare it to something older! 100000x faster than a pc-xt!

I mean, most people don't buy a new phone each year, let alone something as expensive as a laptop. They are probably still targeting Intel Mac, or M1 users for the most part.

I think it's also part of the sales pitch, tho – a lot of folks are sitting on M1s and pretty happy but wondering if they should upgrade.

So long as Apple is willing to keep operating system updates available for the platform. This is by far the most frustrating thing. Apple hardware, amazing and can last for years and even decades. Supported operating system updates, only a couple of years.

I'm typing this from my mid-2012 retina mac book pro. I'm on Mojave and I'm well out of support for the operating system patches. But the hardware keeps running like a champ.

Have you tried OpenCore Patcher? It allows newer macOS to be installed on unsupported macs.

Luckily m1 has Linux.

Apple hardware, amazing and can last for years and even decades. Supported operating system updates, only a couple of years.

That’s not accurate.

Just yesterday, my 2017 Retina 4k iMac got a security update to macOS Ventura 13.7.1 and Safari even though it’s listed as “vintage.”

Now that Apple makes their own processors and GPUs, there’s really no reason in the foreseeable future that Apple would need to stop supporting any Mac with an M-series chip.

The first M1 Macs shipped in November 2020—four years ago but they can run the latest macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence.

Unless Apple makes some major changes to the Mac’s architecture, I don’t expect Apple to stop supporting any M series Mac anytime soon.

To be fair, MOST computers are like that nowadays, regardless of brand. I'm using a Intel desktop that is ~8 years old and runs fine with an upgraded GPU.

Sure, apple isn't the only one making good laptops, though they do make some of the best. My point was just that we definitely aren't back at 90s level of progress. Frequency has barely been scaling since node shrinks stopped helping power density much, and the node shrinks are fewer and farther between.

I bought an M1 MacBook Pro just to use it for net and watching movies when in bed or traveling. I got the Mac because of its 20 hours battery life.

Since Snapdragon X laptops caught up to Apple on battery life I might as well buy one of those when I'll need to change. I don't need the fastest mobile CPU for watching movies and browsing the internet. But I like to have a decent amount of memory to keep a hundred tabs open.

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