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Comment by saltyoldman | Hacker News Reader

I think the craziest thing is that a macbook for $599 that's more powerful than nearly anything they had offered a decade ago (except probably ram amount), and even after adjusting for inflation (which is like 35% from 10 years ago) means the price dropped at least $1500 for a comparable. (People may correct me if I'm wrong)

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The ram is the real sticking point honestly. Yes they are more powerful but consider people's use case. My 2012 dual core mbp is still performant for what most people use their computers for: internet, email, office suite, etc. And I shoved 16gb RAM in that thing 10 years ago. I guess they will just swap on the fast ssd so it will be alright.

> I guess they will just swap on the fast ssd so it will be alright

but that should cause extra wear on the SSD, or is this no longer a concern?

Certainly but I'd guess the problem won't manifest for years and other showstopping pieces might fail before then. That old frankenstein macbook of mine had the same 850 evo ssd I shoved in it for like 8 years of use and abuse, always high temps with that macbook too. People say you shouldn't use an ssd like that but oh well, it seems to work alright.

There wouldn't be so many people who see no need to upgrade their M1 series computers if this were a real concern.

Friend of mine has 32GB laptop with top spec last gen Intel 9 and it barely handles larger Word documents and Teams calls.

The fan is just obnoxious on top of that.

There is just no way it is actually barely handling them. My 2012 with the dual core handles that. Fans turning on doesn't mean it barely handles it. That is just how those intel macs were. They were like that on day 1 in 2012. Spotlight indexing could be enough to spin the fans. Still does the job though even if its hot and noisy.

Depends what your criteria for handling are. The documents work, but navigation (like scrolling) is a slideshow, there is visible lag between pressing a key and character appearing on the screen.

When you switch between browser and Word etc, there is a lag, you can see screen being redrawn etc.

Yes, it "does the job". But experience is abysmal.

Top-spec computers will always shit the bed when they aren't taken care of properly (bloatware, blocked airflow, etc)

Even for the arm series macs the max cpus run way hotter and spin fans sooner than base model in general tasks. Just how those chips are designed. They aren't designed to throttle to keep temps down, they are designed to give you all the horsepower knowing you don't care about noise and heat and care about performance.

Its so weird, something i noticed (or made up) is that at my workplaces, the topspec workstations are always taking ages to boot (counting the ram?). My 15 year old xeon win box boots in about 10sec. Maybe they dont have fastboot enabled idk…

My workplace installs a ton of background software on their PCs. God help you, if it's your first time logging into any PC there and it has to load everything in your account/profile for the first time.

They don't last more than a couple of years before they start becoming painfully slow, even after being reimaged.

Whereas my 10+ year old laptops and desktops are as fast as the day I bought or assembled them.

No bloatware, it's been thoroughly cleaned. Only software friend actually uses is installed.

If the computer has been overworked in the past, it permanently slows it down. Heat can permanently change the electrical resistance of the metal conductors in the computer's components.

Citation needed.

If Apple keeps using A Pro-series chips for the Neo, then the RAM will go to at least 12GB when they swap to the A19 Pro, or newer.

>a decade ago

It's more powerful than my $4000 M1 Max until it heat soaks.

Is it? I had it pegged as pretty much neck-and-neck with the 8GB M1 Macbook Pro that work gave me.

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