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This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance [4]"

[4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air

You’re making it seem like they’re hiding that information under a footnote. The real text on the page, which is quite visible, is:

> Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel‑based MacBook Air

And right next to it:

> Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)

The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the measurements.

So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me they’re quite clearly saying “if you have an Intel or M1 MacBook Air you have reason to upgrade. Otherwise, don’t”.

https://i.imgur.com/pEWPXzK.png

"Up to" is still doing a lot of work there. What kinds of workloads are we talking that get the big numbers, and what can we realistically expect on real workloads?

I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3 processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a Photoshop plugin got 100% of the CPU because there was no preemptive multitasking. Windows 9x versions of Photoshop had to share the CPU with whatever else was running.

Yeah, it is doing a lot of work, as it should be. It's a summary in marketing material, not a research report.

> Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD. Tested using Super Resolution with Pixelmator Pro 3.6.14 and a 4.4MB image. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.

As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly.

If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.

The page up to 2x faster than M1, but it's not worth upgrading from for the average person, your laptop should last longer than 4 years hence why they market to Intel Mac users.

Why would you need onboard mobile? It’s 2 clicks to trigger a mobile hotspot from your iPhone and there are very cheap LTE dongles on eBay. Not sure how much service would cost, most of us have reasonable download caps on our mobile plans. The dongles have better data plans than phones.

Convenience, security, and power-savings. I currently also use a Thinkpad X13s with onboard 5G and it's nice to not have to screw with it when you want connectivity.

On my Verizon plan (Unlimited Ultimate), I qualify for two 'connected devices' to be discounted. My Thinkpad is $10/mo extra on my account for unlimited LTE. I'm not a heavy data user by any means and this works out well for me.

Why wouldn’t I want onboard cellular connection instead of having to be dependent on the more finicky and less reliable Hotspot connection, hurting my ability to use my phone freely, and burning both my laptop and my phone’s batteries at the same time.

Besides, having a cellular modem also allows you to tap into both WiFi and Cellular seamlessly like your phone does to make your overall connection much more reliable.

> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly

yeah i just checked mine, it says MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and the cpu is an intel i7. i don't know what to say, it still meets all my requirements, i don't feel any need to upgrade.

My work laptop is a 2019 i7, my personal is a m3. There is a huge - very very noticeable difference. The thing that actually annoys me the worst with the intel though isn't the 'speed' per se but it's the shitty battery life and heat it generates (and the fan noise that causes).

If it works for you... but I had an Intel MacBook Pro (2019, 16", i9) for a work machine and the fans would sound like a jet engine. Installing NPM dependencies was particularly bad, since all the writes would make the corporate file scanning spyware go crazy. It ran like crap.

I have an M1 Pro (which is considered old now) and it's like night and day.

I still love my M2 MacBook. I can't see any reason at all to upgrade.

But I am glad that they continue to refine the technology.

Yeah, I have a personal m2max. The only thing that might get me to upgrade to the m4 is just being able to hand this laptop down to my sister or my parents for whom it is severe overkill for but they will use it for like 10 more years.

I see a lot of people requesting cellular modems in MacBooks, but the integration with iPhone hotspot connectivity is so good that I don’t really see the point of it for most people.

Different battery, different bills

The integration is fine, but it's not perfect. It kicks my wife off her iPhone Hotspot every time she closes the lid on her laptop. It also burns the battery on her iPhone, which is a concern in the exact situation you'd want cellular connection (places with no wifi often don't have outlets either).

Anecdotally, I've also seen her get issues when going from an area with bad connection to an area with good connection (iPhone will disconnect).

The experience with a non-iphone is also not seamless, though that's to be expected.

Point being that reliable and easy cellular access on a MacBook would be a pretty nice improvement. This is especially true given how much of what people do on computers relies on the internet these days.

> The experience with a non-iphone is also not seamless, though that's to be expected.

Dunno about that, I've been using Androids for hotspotting for years, and haven't noticed any issues.

Battery consumption and antenna efficiency are two major pain points. iPhones suck battery like a horse drinks water when in hotspot mode, and the large surface area of even a small MacBook Air would allow for some pretty interesting antenna design.

And it isn't really ironed out to behave in Germany where on a train you have frequent losses of phone connectivity. Every time it loses signal, the hotspot drops out and disconnects.

You can save battery in hotspot mode by using Bluetooth instead of WiFI, or even better connect the phone and laptop with a cord.

But that’s an ok tradeoff. They offer a cellular iPad, why not MacBook.

They might once they are off Qualcomm modems (the new 16e is now an Apple modem). Qualcomm charges them a royalty fee per device sold.

This is a weak argument. Qualcomm is charging for iphone and ipad too. They could do it if they wanted.

The real reason is Apple wants you to buy an ipad for on the road. Laptops, according to them, are strictly for office/home usage where wifi is available.

One benefit is that computer stays connected even if you go somewhere else with your phone.

It's one of those small things that makes like a bit easier. On Lenovo/HP these have been around for years and they don't cost that much.

> If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity

I don't even want that on my iPad Pro. I would rather tether it with my phone, mobile hotspot, or some other wifi connection.

Yeah, they trash idle/sleep battery life—or, at least, used to, back when I had access to lots of differently-configured iPads for my job—so you don’t want it on there unless you really need it.

> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target

Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and battery life are still way more than I need.

I had someone tell me "an Air? You're a developer, you need a Pro" and I thought to myself, well this Air is frankly amazing.

Literally the only material difference between using my M1 Air and my work M1 Pro is the somewhat-better port selection on the Pro. Though even that doesn't have the single-most-useful port it could (aside from USB-C): a USB-A port.

The extra ram in a pro comes in handy at a certain scale, but the price tag is oof.

few weeks back a professional ios dev looked at my m1 pro and ask why i had an air instead of pro. i might go air when i finally upgrade bc the new pros are giant compared to the m1

Really? I have both an M1 Pro and M4 pro and never really noticed a size difference.

on reflection they had one with an HDMI port. maybe that was the difference

You mean you have an Intel Pro? There's been no changes to the pro chassis for Apple silicon, M1 Pro 14/16 are the exact same as the M4 Pros.

I assume they had a M1 MacBook Pro rather than a M1 Pro MacBook Pro

Ah right, I forgot they had an M1 variant in the older Pro chassis.

I'm at exactly the same point with mine, it still feels like new even though it is nearly 5 years old.

I have yet to update beyond Monterey though (even though I really should) in case it slows down a bit or the battery life isn't as good.

This mimics my experience. I bought the absolute bottom barrel M1 when they launched to replace my 2014 MBP, 8gb RAM and 128gb of space. The HD space is annoying, but otherwise this machine is untouchable. I do game dev work bouncing between the MBA and my gaming rig, which is Ryzen 7 2700, 64gb RAM and a 3070, and with certain benchmarks, the MBA still wins, silently, on battery for hours. Still blows my mind.

Mid-2014 MBP, that's amazing. Did you buy it new? And actually used it since 2014?

Not who you replied to but I’m on a Mid-2014 15 inch MBP retina, bought new and used nearly every day since and taken on dozens of trips.

I had the battery replaced, the tab key replaced, and the screen refinished (anti-glare coating removed) for about $240 a couple years ago and aside from the fact it can’t be updated beyond Big Sur 11.7.10 I have no issues.

Bought new since 2014, used all the way to launchday M1.

I was riding the 'service battery' indicator all the way to the bloody end. 1148 cycles, max capacity 3735 mAh.

Fantastic... seriously, kudos. I love it when people use up every last ounce of their hardware.

I have a Late 2013 MBP still going strong. Original battery, original charger, no repairs whatsoever, hours of battery life still. Wife stopped using it just two months ago when I upgraded her to my M1 Air.

My 2014 got a little screwy around 2022 and eventually wifi stopped working entirely (I suspect battery swelling putting pressure on something) but if not for that I'd still be using it. Hell, I probably could have gotten it fixed, though I'd prefer to put that money toward another machine that'll last me 8+ years.

I'm on a 2020 [edit: I got it as part of comp for a contracting gig, is why the overlap in years with my 2014 MBP ownership, but didn't switch to using it for personal stuff until after that was over and my MPB wifi broke] M1 Air now, so close to or in year 6 for that. No issues yet and battery life still stellar, should get at least 2-3 more years.

(Folks who are like "LOL who even needs 18 hours of battery life?", which is a common sort of post on Apple laptop announcements: well for one thing it's extremely nice to be hunting for outlets even less often, and to maybe go on a whole light-laptop-use 3-day trip and not charge it the whole time and it's still alive at the end of it, or to have that battery as reserve for charging your phone, but also and perhaps most importantly, it means that a 30% degraded battery after several years of ownership still gets you 10+ hours of real-world use)

MacBooks last a ridiculously long time.

I used my 2011 MBP daily until upgrading to a 2020 M1 air.

I kinda miss the ridiculous heat output on winter mornings.

Same, except my 2009 Mac Pro made for a better space heater, until I replaced it with an MBP M1 that doesn't have the decency to make noise to let me know it's working. Only downside of upgrading is that I had to get off of Mojave.

I think that was around the time when macbooks were "fast enough", especially since that was when SSDs became the default. I remember I got my first macbook around 2011/12 and at the time doing your own upgrade of memory and replacing the hard drive with an SSD was a pretty popular DIY upgrade (N=1).

> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly.

Yeah, particularly for the Air that makes complete sense, though. Consumer laptops tend to get replaced pretty slowly. I'll be upgrading from a _2016_ MBP (though not to the Air, given the lack of the 120hz screen; going to go for the Pro).

To be clear:

1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade!

2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!

3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though).

4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!

Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.

"Hey, you noticed things are slow? Well, this thing is a lot faster" is pretty good marketing if it's true, nobody except the very wealthy are dropping thousands of euros/dollars on a new device for 10% performance gains, however if it's twenty-three times the performance of the Mac I currently own? Maybe it's enough to convince me or someone like my Mum to splurge on a new device.

Maybe my current Mac is not "good enough" anymore when 23x is the number on the box if I buy new.

It's fair to compare with devices that you expect actual people to actually upgrade from, there's a lot of Intel macbook airs in the field.

Heck, even some professionals are still on Intel macs: https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/25-of-...

> 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!

> 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!

> 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!

2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.

I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.

> I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.

My personal laptop is a 2014 MacBook Pro. I'll be buying one of these new M4 Airs, and comparing to an 11-year-old computer.

yeah, managed to eeek about 10 years from minimum spec 2013 mbp

As someone that had a 2011 MacBook Pro for I think 9 years and loved it, be glad you’ve skipped over the whole butterfly keyboard/Touch Bar era.

I now have an M2 Air and have zero complaints, it’s the best computing device I’ve ever owned. You’re going to really enjoy the M4.

Since graduating from college in 1993, working in the graphic design industry full-time through 2019, I had two brand-new Macs (a PowerMac G3/800MHz, and a G5), the balance were hand-me-downs from other employees --- the G5 in particular was especially long-lasting, though ultimately it was supplemented by an Intel iMac.

Each year when Apple came out with new machines, we would make a game of putting together a dream machine --- ages ago, that could easily hit 6 figures, these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099 and a Pro Display w/ stand and nano texture adds $6,998 or so.

> these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099

Not surprising considering the CPU in the fastest "desktop" Mac before today was slower than an old Intel chips you can buy for ~$350 (e.g. the 14700k).

TBH, for non-tech folks that upgrade cycle has likely stretched a good bit beyond 3-5 years. 3-5 was the norm 10 years ago, but I’d wager needs-driven upgrades, opposed to marketing driven, are closer to 7-10 years outside of obvious niches.

Sample size one: My spouse is using either a 2013 MBA and wants to upgrade, mostly b/c the enshitification of web sites. Basic productivity was okay-ish for her work (document creation, pdfs, spreadsheets, etc), but even Gmail now suffers with more than a tab.

Edit: thinking more, I don’t know if I agree with myself here.

> Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.

It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless. What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.

> It's fair to compare

Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like any of those people this is targeted at would feel a difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.

> What does "23x faster" even mean

The measurements are in the linked footnote, they tested the “Super Resolution” upscaling feature of Pixelmator Pro.

Well yeah, I understand that this is based on some specific benchmark. Yet it's still some random arbitrary number effectively picked to mislead consumers.

Especially when for the M1 (2x faster) they decided to use an entirely different Photoshop benchmark YET they they still show it alongside the 23x for the Pixelmator one (presumably the M4 is NOT 2x faster than the M1 there..).

That's just objectively slimy (even if mostly harmless) marketing...

Also presumably Pixelmator's "Super Resolution" and Photoshop's "radial blur, content aware scale, diffuse, find edges" are also mostly GPU bound these days? Which again.. might not be the best indicator for "performance" for most consumers.

Edit: Looking at some more general benchmarks the the i7 (I7-1060NG7) from the last Intel MBA is "only" 4x (Geekbench MT), ~2.7x (Single-Core) or 2x (Cinebench single core) slower than the M4. Picking some highly specific "benchmark" that's several times higher than that is just dishonest.

The point is that benchmark is pretty useless and likely does not line up to what a user that is still running a intel air would expect the word "faster" even means.

When normal users are thinking "faster" they are really thinking about snappiness/responsiveness, not number crunching.

Those benchmarks seem to be more GPU based as well. e.g. something like Geekbench (not that it's necessarily that representative either) is just 2-3x faster.

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m4-vs-intel_...

It's hardly the same person saying all of these things, though. Are you just annoyed at the variety of opinions that come from people on the internet?

Ten million times faster! (Compared to the Apollo 11 guidance computer)

This gave me a chuckle

Depends what you mean by 'faster' ... I wouldn't be surprised if the AGC was more responsive (faster response on the screen to user input) than a modern computer. Early computers were often quite snappy.

https://danluu.com/input-lag/

The hardware may be ten million times faster, but the software...

Considering that a modern Ryzen is 1375 times faster than a VAXstation 4000/60, and a VAXstation 4000/60 is around 1280 times faster, at least in clock, than an AGC, that would mean the M4 would need to be about 5.6 times faster than that modern Ryzen.

Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.

https://zia.io/notice/ApcPNCgTyrYXpUQU2S

It makes sense because that's who's upgrading.

I've got an M1 Air and there's still no really compelling reason to upgrade. MagSafe and a nicer camera don't really justify it, especially when Continuity Camera is better than on the M1 or M4.

In the days before USB-C, MagSafe was great. Tripping on the cable and it snapping off safely was really cool.

These days, it's an anti-feature. I have USB-C for everything, why would I give that up?

You don’t give it up. USB C charging still works just fine.

Maybe I was unclear - the MagSafe cable is still in the box. It's pointless to me, I have USB-C cables all over my house, I'm not using anything else.

I'm in the same boat. My base model M1 air is the longest I've owned a laptop without upgrading. And it's perfectly fine. (and yes it only has 8gb)

Everyone who has been around since at least the Snail ads should be used to Apple's fluff and promptly ignoring it until benchmarks are released.

As I said in another comment, probably the benchmark is done just using some hardware instruction that didn't exist on those models and gets compiled to several instructions (possibly by a very very old compiler, while we're at it) vs something handwritten in assembly for the purpose of one specific benchmark.

Does this mean it's 23x faster for normal workloads? Nah.

Apple when they were pumping clang were also claiming that binaries produced with clang were much faster than those made with gcc. This was because they used a 15 years old version of gcc that didn't have any vector instructions (because they didn't exist at the time) and benchmarking using some code that was solely doing vector stuff.

In short, they don't lie, but it's a lie :D

Haha. Well, I guess it kind of makes sense in some way, Apple doesn’t want to say anything negative about any generation of “M” processor, maybe?

Up to 23x faster. Of course, the fastest Intel MacBook Air is pretty old. But 23X is pretty crazy, right? I wonder what they are comparing against. Int-8 matrix multiplications or something else that’s gotten acceleration lately, maybe?

That’s roughly the Air I have still. I hate using it (prior to recently adding the cooler shim mod, it would thermal throttle constantly) but between a Hackintosh and my work Mac I haven’t felt the need to upgrade. I think sometime in this M4/M5 gen is when I’ll pull the trigger and retire the Hackintosh to gaming rig only status.

I don't think it's silly to state. That message is probably for intel macbook air users who may be considering an upgrade.

(Anyway, I just ordered one for my wife, a soon-to-be-ex-intel-mac user. She'll probably be pretty happy about this, especially since she doesn't have an intel air as powerful as that one.)

People don't upgrade every year. I still have an Intel MacBook Pro (2020 I think?) that I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon because it still works great.

And the benchmark is probably jut using one hw instruction that didn't exist on that model and now exists, and is not representative of anything at all.

Also to note, a typical macbooks' life span is more than ~5years - so are the target audience

M4 2x faster than M1.

M3 1.6x faster than M1 (1 year ago).

= M4 1.2x faster than M3.

not bad, but Moore's law is dead for CPUs.

I love how even fair and justifiable critique of Apple needs to be hedged with the "Apple is great" prefix, such is the terror of the Apple downvote mafia on HN.

/typed from my Macbook Pro M4 — Love Apple — This is great!

The first thing I noticed in all of these announcements is that every main comparison is against M1. Why are they comparing with hardware 2-3 generations ago? I don't care whether my Intel i9 has 50x the performance of a Pentium processor from the 90s, it seems like a disingenuous attempt to make the numbers as high as possible.

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