M4 MacBook Pro

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/new-macbook-pro-features-m4-family-of-chips-and-apple-intelligence/

by tosh • 2 years ago

920 1315 2 years ago

scrlk• 2 years ago

Nano-texture option for the display is nice. IIRC it's the first time since the 2012 15" MBP that a matte option has been offered?

I hope that the response times have improved, because it has been quite poor for a 120 Hz panel.

ant6n3• 2 years ago

They brought back the matte screen! Omg. The question is, will they have that for the air.

(I tend to feel if you want something specialized, you gotta pay for the expensive model)

pcdoodle• 2 years ago

Yes. It's finally back.

lapcat2• 2 years ago

IIRC it's the first time since the 2012 15" MBP that a matte option has been offered?

The so-called "antiglare" option wasn't true matte. You'd really have to go back to 2008.

lapcat2• 2 years ago

Correction: I think I actually misremembered that, sorry!

Eric_WVGG2• 2 years ago

Love the nano-texture on the Studio Display, but my MacBooks have always suffered from finger oil rubbing the screen from the keys. Fingerprint oil on nano-texture sounds like a recipe for disaster.

For my current laptop, I finally broke down and bought a tempered glass screen protector. It adds a bit of glare, but wipes clean — and for the first time I have a one-year-old MacBook that still looks as good as new.

jonah• 2 years ago

I put a thin screen cleaner/glasses cleaner cloth on the keyboard whenever I close the lid. That keeps the oils off the screen as well as prevents any pressure or rubbing from damaging the glass.

sroussey12• 2 years ago

The iPad has nano texture and I find it does a much better job with oily fingerprints.

jhickok• 2 years ago

My one concern is that nano-texture apple displays are a little more sensitive to damage, and even being super careful with my MBPs I get the little marks from the keyboard when you carry the laptop with your hand squeezing the lid and bottom (a natural carry motion).

coolspot2• 2 years ago

Put a facial tissue over keyboard before closing the lid.

thom• 2 years ago

It's also on the iPad Pro. Only downside is you really do need the right cloth to be able to clean it.

umanwizard11• 2 years ago

I believe the laptop ships with the cloth. That said, it is annoying to have to remember to always keep that one cloth with your laptop.

dcchambers3• 2 years ago

Now available in space black and silver finishes.

No space grey?!

billti• 2 years ago

I don't think they had Space Grey on the M3 models either. That was initially my preference, but I went with the Black and quite like it.

matsz• 2 years ago

Wonder how good are those for LLMs (compared to M3 Pro/Max)... They talk about the Neural Engine a lot in the press release.

Lalabadie• 2 years ago

I'm not sure we can leverage the neural cores for now, but they're already rather good for LLMs, depending on what metrics you value most.

A specced out Mac Studio (M2 being the latest model as of today) isn't cheap, but it can run 180B models, run them fast for the price, and use <300W of power doing it. It idles below 10W as well.

opjjf• 2 years ago

It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air:

MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB
MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

alsetmusic3• 2 years ago

Ohh, good catch. Sneaking that into the MBP announcement. I skimmed the page and missed that. So a fourth announcement couched within the biggest of the three days.

jsheard6• 2 years ago

Every M-series device now comes with at least 16GB, except for the base iPad Pro, right?

MBCook2• 2 years ago

At least all the M4 Macs. I’m not sure of every older M config has been updated, though at least some have been.

fckgw6• 2 years ago

Correct, every Mac computer starts at 16gb now. 256gb/512gb iPad Pro is 8gb, 1tb/2tb is 16gb.

abhinavk• 2 years ago

while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop

Only in US it seems. India got a price increase by $120.

electriclove2• 2 years ago

Wow, I didn't expect them to update the older models to start at 16GB and no price increase. I guess that is why Amazon was blowing the 8GB models out at crazy low prices over the past few days.

bronco21016• 2 years ago

Costco was selling MB Air M2 8 GB for $699! Incredible deal.

I’ve been using the exact model for about a year and I rarely find limitations for my typical office type work. The only time I’ve managed to thermally throttle it has been with some super suboptimal Excel Macros.

bhouston7• 2 years ago

But no update to a M4 for the MacBook Air yet unfortunately. I would love to get an M4 MacBook Air with 32GB.

I believe the rumor is that the MacBook Air will get the update to M4 in early spring 2025, February/March timeline.

nsbk• 2 years ago

This is the machine I'm waiting for. Hopefully early 2025

ant6n3• 2 years ago

The big question for me is whether they will have a matte option for the Air. I want a fanless machine with a matte screen.

Unfortunately Apple won’t tell you until the day they sell the machines.

twilo• 2 years ago

Great news. The pro is kinda of heavy for my liking so the Air is the way to go

Analemma_• 2 years ago

I think spec-wise the Air is good enough for almost everyone who isn't doing video production or running local LLMs, I just wish it had the much nicer screen that the Pro has. But I suppose they have to segregate the product lines somehow.

int_19h7• 2 years ago

It's not just the weight - Air is also fanless (and still runs cold).

And yes, with enough RAM, it is a surprisingly good dev laptop.

nsteel2• 2 years ago

But still just 256GB SSD Storage. £200 for the upgrade to 512GB (plus a couple more GPU cores that I don't need. Urgh.

DrBenCarson2• 2 years ago

It’s stationary. Just get a Thunderbolt NVMe drive and leave it plugged in

FireBeyond3• 2 years ago

Well, the issue for me with memory on these new models is that for the Max, it ships with 36GB and NO expandable memory option. To get more memory that's gated behind a $300 CPU upgrade (plus the memory cost).

yurishimo• 2 years ago

It'll be interesting to see the reaction of tech commentators about this. So many people have been screaming at Apple to increase the base RAM and stop price gouging their customers on memory upgrades. If Apple Intelligence is the excuse the hardware team needed to get the bean counters on board, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!

sroussey12• 2 years ago

So we can scream about the lousy base storage, which is the same as my phone. Yikes.

alberth3• 2 years ago

I guess that implies the MacBook Air won't be updated this week.

Makes me wonder what else will be updated this week (Studio or Mac Pro)?

modeless• 2 years ago

I've seen a lot of people complaining about 8GB but honestly my min spec M1 Air has continued to be great. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a refurb M1 8GB Air for anyone price conscious.

hiatus• 2 years ago

If only they would bring back the 11" Air.

ActorNightly2• 2 years ago

Im sorry but any laptop that costs $1000 should come with 64 gigs minimum, or expandable slots.

georgeecollins• 2 years ago

Tell me you are poor without telling me you are poor.

Just kidding! As an Apple Shareholder I feel like you should take what Apple gives you and accept the price. ;)

russelg• 2 years ago

Can you actually point out any retail laptops with that spec for that price?

opdahl2• 2 years ago

Just cancelled my order for a 24GB MacBook Air 15-inch, and then ordered the exact same setup. Saved around $300!

nakedgremlin• 2 years ago

Yeah, this one caught me off guard. We just purchased a MacBook Air in the last month and if we bought the same one now, we would save $200. Apple support would not price match/correct that, so we will be returning it and purchasing anew.

woodglyst• 2 years ago

Thanks to your comment. I persuaded my friend who purchased an M3 Air 24GB recently and we got 200$ back (Remuneration for price drop valid for 14 days after the date of DELIVERY) where we live

abnry• 2 years ago

How viable is Asani Linux these days? MacBook hardware looks amazing.

dcchambers3• 2 years ago

No support for M3 or M4 powered machines currently.

All Apple Silicon Macs are in scope, as well as future generations as development time permits. We currently have support for most machines of the M1 and M2 generations.[^1][^2]

[^1]: https://asahilinux.org/about/

[^2]: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support

kristofferR3• 2 years ago

Have anyone tried it recently, specifically the trackpad? I tried the Fedora variant a few months ago on my M1 Macbook and it was horrible to use the trackpad, it felt totally foreign and wrong.

philistine3• 2 years ago

I feel you, but Apple's trackpad prowess is not an easy thing to copy. It's one of those things I never expect anyone else to be able to replicate the level of deep integration between the hardware and software.

It's 2024, and I still see most Windows users carrying a mouse to use with their laptop.

drhodes• 2 years ago

btw, there is a recent interview with an Asani dev focusing on GPUs, worth a listen for those interested in linux on apple silicon. The reverse engineering effort required to pin down the GPU hardware was one of the main topics.

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2024/10/15/linux-apple-...

jitl3• 2 years ago

For many years I treated Windows or macOS as a hypervisor - if you love Linux but want the Mac hardware, instant sleep & wake, etc, putting a full screen VM in Parallels or similar is imo better than running Linux in terms of productivity, although it falls short on “freedom”.

umanwizard11• 2 years ago

I do the same thing, but there are two big caveats:

1. Nested virtualization doesn't work in most virtualization software, so if your workflow involves running stuff in VMs it is not going to work from within another VM. The exception is apparently now the beta version of UTM with the Apple Virtualization backend, but that's highly experimental.

2. Trackpad scrolling is emulated as discrete mouse wheel clicks, which is really annoying for anyone used to the smooth scrolling on macOS. So what I do is use macOS for most browsing and other non-technical stuff but do all my coding in the Linux VM.

BrentOzar• 2 years ago

The M4 Max goes up to 128GB RAM, and "over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth" - LLM users rejoice.

manaskarekar4• 2 years ago

The M3 Max was 400GBps, this is 540GBps. Truly an outstanding case for unified memory. DDR5 doesn't come anywhere near.

vid3• 2 years ago

It's not "DDR5" on its own, it's a few factors.

Bandwidth (GB/s) = (Data Rate (MT/s) * Channel Width (bits) * Number of Channels) / 8 / 1000

(8800 MT/s * 64 bits * 8 channels) / 8 / 1000 = 563.2 GB/s

This is still half the speed of a consumer NVidia card, but the large amounts of memory is great, if you don't mind running things more slowly and with fewer libraries.

jsheard6• 2 years ago

It's not the memory being unified that makes it fast, it's the combination of the memory bus being extremely wide and the memory being extremely close to the processor. It's the same principle that discrete GPUs or server CPUs with onboard HBM memory use to make their non-unified memory go ultra fast.

metadat4• 2 years ago

I was curious so I looked it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM (info from the first section):

DDR5 is capable of 8GT/s which translates to 64 GB/s (8 gigatransfers/second * 64-bit width / 8 bits/byte = 64 GB/s) of bandwidth per DIMM.

So for example if you have a server with 16 DDR5 DIMMs (sticks) it equates to 1,024 GB/s of total bandwidth.

DDR4 clocks in at 3.2GT/s and the fastest DDR3 at 2.1GT/s.

DDR5 is an impressive jump. HBM is totally bonkers at 128GB/s per DIMM (HBM is the memory used in the top end Nvidia datacenter cards).

Cheers.

Rohansi3• 2 years ago

Apple is using LPDDR5 for M3. The bandwidth doesn't come from unified memory - it comes from using many channels. You could get the same bandwidth or more with normal DDR5 modules if you could use 8 or more channels, but in the PC space you don't usually see more than 2 or 4 channels (only common for servers).

Unrelated but unified memory is a strange buzzword being used by Apple. Their memory is no different than other computers. In fact, every computer without a discrete GPU uses a unified memory model these days!

mort966• 2 years ago

This is a case for on-package memory, not for unified memory... Laptops have had unified memory forever

EDIT: wtf what's so bad about this comment that it deserves being downvoted so much

jedisct1• 2 years ago

Is it GBps or Gbps?

garciasn2• 2 years ago

We run our LLM workloads on a M2 Ultra because of this. 2x the VRAM; one-time cost at $5350 was the same as, at the time, 1 month of 80GB VRAM GPU in GCP. Works well for us.

manaskarekar4• 2 years ago

If the 2x multiplier holds up, the Ultra update should bring it up to 1080GBps. Amazing.

bushbaba• 2 years ago

About 10-20% of my companies gpu usage is inference dev. Yes horribly not efficient usage of resources. We could upgrade the 100ish devs who do this dev work to M4 mbp and free up gpu resources

Smart move by Apple

sgt101• 2 years ago

You have another one with a network gateway to provide hot failover?

Right?

alfonsodev• 2 years ago

Can you elaborate, are those workflows in queue or can they serve multiple users in parallel ?

I think it’s super interesting to know real life workflows and performance of different LLMs and hardware, in case you can direct me to other resources. Thanks !

Der_Einzige• 2 years ago

Right now, there are 0.90$ per hour H100 80gbs that you can rent.

charlescurt123• 2 years ago

comparing a laptop to a A100 (312 teraFLOPS) or H100 (~1P FLOPS) server is a stretch to say the least.

An M2 is according to a reddit post around 27 tflops

So < 1/10 the performance of just computation. let alone the memory.

What workflow would use something like this?

Inviz• 2 years ago

I have M3 Max with 128GB of ram, it's really liberating.

sfn42• 2 years ago

I have 32gb and I've never felt like I needed more.

doctoboggan3• 2 years ago

This is definitely tempting me to upgrade my M1 macbook pro. I think I have 400GB/s of memory bandwidth. I am wondering what the specific number "over half a terabyte" means.

rsanek• 2 years ago

540

moffkalast5• 2 years ago

Well it's more like pick your poison, cause all options have caveats:

- Apple: all the capacity and bandwidth, but no compute to utilize it

- AMD/Nvidia: all the compute and bandwidth, but no capacity to load anything

- DDR5: all the capacity, but no compute or bandwidth (cheap tho)

Dibby053• 2 years ago

Why was this downvoted?

thimabi6• 2 years ago

At least in the recent past, a hindrance was that MacOS limited how much of that unified memory could be assigned as VRAM. Those who wanted to exceed the limits had to tinker with kernel settings.

I wonder if that has changed or is about to change as Apple pivots their devices to better serve AI workflows as well.

segmondy• 2 years ago

Need more memory, 256GB will be nice. MistralLarge is 123B. Can't even give a quantized Llama405B a drive. LLM users rejoice. LLM power users, weep.

jjcm• 2 years ago

For context, the 4090 has 1,008 GB/s of bandwidth.

spacedcowboy5• 2 years ago

... but only 1/4 of the actual memory, right ?

The M4-Max I just ordered comes with 128GB of RAM.

culi• 2 years ago

you'd probably save money just paying for a VPS. And you wouldn't cook your personal laptop as fast. Not that people nowadays keep their electronics for long enough for that to matter :/

losvedir• 2 years ago

I'm curious about getting one of these to run LLM models locally, but I don't understand the cost benefit very well. Even 128GB can't run, like, a state of the art Claude 3.5 or GPT 4o model right? Conversely, even 16GB can (I think?) run a smaller, quantized Llama model. What's the sweet spot for running a capable model locally (and likely future local-scale models)?

brandall10• 2 years ago

You'll be able to run 72B models w/ large context, lightly quantized with decent'ish performance, like 20-25 tok/sec. The best of the bunch are maybe 90% of a Claude 3.5.

If you need to do some work offline, or for some reason the place you work blocks access to cloud providers, it's not a bad way to go, really. Note that if you're on battery, heavy LLM use can kill your battery in an hour.

SkyMarshal• 2 years ago

Lots of discussion and testing of that over on https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/, worth following if you're not already.

bufferoverflow• 2 years ago

Claude 3.5 and GPT 4o are huge models. They don't run on consumer hardware.

joeevans10002• 2 years ago

I am always wondering if one shouldn't be doing the resource intensive LLM stuff in the cloud. I don't know enough to know the advantages of doing it locally.

alexchantavy• 2 years ago

Curious, what are others using local LLMs on a MBP for? Hobby?

jfoster3• 2 years ago

Have they published this ahead of other pages or is it just me?

The linked Apple Store page says "MacBook Pro blasts forward with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips" so it seems like the old version of the page still?

jasongill2• 2 years ago

yes, it's not anywhere but the press release at this time

jfoster3• 2 years ago

Looks like it's updated now.

Hamuko• 2 years ago

I noticed the same, but it looks like the pre-order link now gives me M4 chips instead of M3.

jerojero2• 2 years ago

Finally they're doing starting memory at 16gb.

Looking at how long the 8gb lasted it's a pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years.

I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.

I'd say the one incentive a MacBook Pro has over the air is the better a screens and better speakers. Not sure if it's worth the money.

efields• 2 years ago

My hypothesis is Apple is mostly right about their base model offerings.

I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.

If an HN user can get along with 16gb on their MacBook Air for the last X years, most users were able to get by with 8gb.

skellington• 2 years ago

It's just a tactic to get a higher average price while being able to advertise a lower price. What makes it infuriating is memory is dirt cheap. That extra 8GB probably costs them $10 at most, but would add to utility and longevity of their hardware quite a bit.

They are supposed to be "green" but they encourage obsolescence.

axelthegerman3• 2 years ago

pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years.

Or you could get a framework and you could actually upgrade parts that are worth upgrading - instead of upgrade as in buying a new one

ativzzz• 2 years ago

I bought a framework back in 2020 or so and really wish I just waited a little longer and spent a few hundred bucks more on the M1.

It's fine, but the issue is linux sleep/hibernate - battery drain. To use the laptop after a few days, I have to plug it in and wait for it to charge a little bit because the battery dies. I have to shut it down (not just close the screen) before flying or my backpack becomes a heater and the laptop dies. To use a macbook that's been closed for months I just open it and it works. I'll pay double for that experience. If I want a computer that needs to be plugged in to work I have a desktop for that already. The battery life is not good either.

Maybe it's better now if I take the time to research what to upgrade, but I don't have the time to tinker with hardware/linux config like I did a few years ago.

jerojero2• 2 years ago

I don't mind spending a thousand bucks every 7 years to upgrade my laptop. I've had this macbook air since 2020 and besides the speakers don't being the best... I have no complaints.

I don't really see a world where this machine doesn't last me a few more years. If there's anything i'd service would be the battery, but eh. It lasts more than a few hours and I don't go out much.

fsflover3• 2 years ago

while protecting their privacy

This is misleading:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

"macOS sends hashes of every opened executable to some server of theirs"

ilikepi• 2 years ago

This is misleading: ...

To be fair, the link in this story is to a press release. Arguably there are probably many things in it that can be considered "misleading" in certain contexts.

moffkalast5• 2 years ago

What's the deal with running Linux on these anyway? Could one conceivably set up an M4 mini as headless server? I presume Metal would be impossible to get working if MacOS uses proprietary drivers for it...

wmf2• 2 years ago

Metal doesn't exist under Linux but OpenGL and Vulkan work.

tomrod3• 2 years ago

This is the first compelling Mac to me. I've used Macs for a few clients and muscle memory is very deeply ingrained for linux desktops. But with local LLMs finally on the verge of usability along with sufficient memory... I might need to make the jump!

Wish I could spin up a Linux OS on the hardware though. Not a bright spot for me.

d1str02• 2 years ago

Check out Asahi linux

aidenfoxivey• 2 years ago

You totally can after a little bit of time waiting for M4 bringup!

https://asahilinux.org

It won't have all the niceties / hardware support of MacOS, but it seamlessly coexists with MacOS, can handle the GPU/CPU/RAM with no issues, and can provide you a good GNU/Linux environment.

p_j_w• 2 years ago

Asahi doesn't work on M3 yet after a year. It's gonna be a bit before M4 support is here.

umanwizard11• 2 years ago

"a little bit of time" is a bit disingenuous given that they haven't even started working on the M3.

(This isn't a dig on the Asahi project btw, I think it's great).

BenFranklin1003• 2 years ago

Off topic, but I’m very interested in local LLMs. Could you point me in the right direction, both hardware specs and models?

thrownblown• 2 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SillyTavernAI/

doctoboggan3• 2 years ago

In general for local LLMs, the more memory the better. You will be able to fit larger models in RAM. The faster CPU will give you more tokens/second, but if you are just chatting with a human in the loop, most recent M series macs will be able to generate tokens faster than you can read them.

noman-land2• 2 years ago

Get as much RAM as you can stomach paying for.

touristtam2• 2 years ago

Have a look at ollama? I think there is a vscode extension to hook into local LLM if you are so inclined: https://ollama.com/blog/continue-code-assistant

lowbloodsugar2• 2 years ago

You can spin up a Unix OS. =) It’s even older than Linux.

umanwizard11• 2 years ago

NextSTEP which macOS is ultimately based on is indeed older than Linux (first release was 1989). But why does that matter? The commenter presumably said "Linux" for a reason, i.e. they want to use Linux specifically, not any UNIX-like OS.

tomrod3• 2 years ago

BSD is fun (not counting MacOS in the set there), but no, my Unix experiences have been universally legacy hardware oversubscribed and undermaintained. Not my favorite place to spend any time.

__MatrixMan__2• 2 years ago

I miss Linux, it respected me in ways that MacOS doesn't. But maintaining a sane dev environment on linux when my co-workers on MacOS are committing bash scripts that call brew... I am glad that I gave up that fight. And yeah, the hardware sure is nice.

tomrod3• 2 years ago

IIRC brew supports linux, but it isn't a package manager I pay attention to outside of some very basic needs. Way too much supply chain security domain to cover for it!

darylteo• 2 years ago

I've been lightly using ollama on the m1 max and 64gb RAM. Not a power user but enough for code completions.

w10-1• 2 years ago

macOS virtualization of Linux is very fast and flexible. Their sample code shows it's easy without any kind of service/application: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

However, it doesn't support snapshots for Linux, so you need to power down each session.

jcmontx• 2 years ago

"up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro"

I insist my 2020 Macbook M1 was the best purchase I ever made

d1str02• 2 years ago

Same. My MBP and M1 Air are amazing machines. But I’m now also excited that any future M chip replacement will be faster and just as nice.

The battery performance is incredible too.

BenFranklin1003• 2 years ago

I got a refurbed M1 iPad Pro 12.9” for $900 a couple years ago and have been quite pleased. I still have a couple of years life in it I estimate.

stetrain• 2 years ago

Yep. That's roughly 20% per generation improvement which ain't half-bad these days, but the really huge cliff was going from Intel to the M1 generation.

M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.

Cthulhu_5• 2 years ago

It feels like M1 was the revolution, subsequent ones evolution - smaller fabrication process for improved energy efficiency, more cores for more power, higher memory (storage?) bandwidth, more displays (that was a major and valid criticism for the M1 even though in practice >1 external screens is a relatively rare use case for <5% of users).

Actually wasn't M1 itself an evolution / upscale of their A series CPUS that by now they've been working on since... before 2010, the iPhone 4 was the first one with their own CPU, although the design was from Samsung + Intrinsity, it was only the A6 that they claimed was custom designed by Apple.

drewbitt2• 2 years ago

And my 2020 Intel Macbook Air was a bad purchase. Cruelly, the Intel and M1 Macbook Air released within 6 months of each other.

rconti3• 2 years ago

In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway?

Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now.

That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.

chrizel• 2 years ago

Oh yes, my wife bought a new Intel MBA in summer 2020... I told her at the time Apple planned its own chip, but it couldn't be much better than the Intel one and surely Apple will increase prices too... I was so wrong.

ElCapitanMarkla2• 2 years ago

Yeah I’m in the same boat. I had my old mid 2013 Air for 7 years before I pulled the trigger on that too. I’ll be grabbing myself an M4 Pro this time

shade• 2 years ago

I have the OG 13" MBP M1, and it's been great; I only have two real reasons I'm considering jumping to the 14" MBP M4 Pro finally:

- More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice)

- A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :(

Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.

bombcar• 2 years ago

The M1 Max supports more than one external display natively, which is also an option.

KptMarchewa5• 2 years ago

I don't think it's niche. It's the reason why I and multiple of my coworkers waited till M1 Pro with buying one.

I'm definitely still happy with it, but job offers upgrade to M4 so... why not?

AdamJacobMuller8• 2 years ago

Yep.

I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. I was more or less upgrading yearly in the past because the speed increases (both in the G4 and then Intel generations) were so significant. This M1 has exceeded my expectations in every category, it's faster quieter and cooler than any laptop i've ever owned.

I've had this laptop since release in 2020 and I have nearly 0 complaints with it.

I wouldn't upgrade except the increase in memory is great, I don't want to have to shut down apps to be able to load some huge LLMs, and, I ding'ed the top case a few months ago and now there's a shadow on the screen in that spot in some lighting conditions which is very annoying.

I hope (and expect) the M4 to last just as long as my M1 did.

jader201• 2 years ago

I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1.

My 2015 MBP would like to have a word.

It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly.

I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.

touristtam2• 2 years ago

How do you justify this kind of recurring purchases, even with selling your old device? I don't get the behaviour or the driving decision factor past the obvious "I need the latest shiny toy" (I can't find the exact words to describe it, so apologies for the reductive description).

I have either assembled my own desktop computers or purchased ex corporate Lenovo over the years with a mix of Windows (for gaming obviously) and Linux and only recently (4 years ago) been given a MBP by work as they (IT) cannot manage Linux machines like they do with MacOS and Windows.

I have moved from an intel i5 MBP to a M3 Pro (?) and it makes me want to throw away my dependable ThinkPad/Fedora machine I still uses for personal projects.

garyrob3• 2 years ago

"I've had this laptop since release in 2020 and I have nearly 0 complaints with it."

Me too. Only one complaint. After I accidentally spilled a cup of water into it on an airplane, it didn't work.

(However AppleCare fixed it for $300 and I had a very recent backup. :) )

halfmatthalfcat2• 2 years ago

My 2019 i9 going strong as ever. With 64gb ram, really don’t need to upgrade for at least a couple more years.

LeafItAlone3• 2 years ago

I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1

What different lives we live. This first M1 was in November 2020. Not even four years old. I’ve never had a [personal] computer for _less_ time than that. (Work, yes, due to changing jobs or company-dictated changes/upgrades)

lqet• 2 years ago

I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1.

I still have a running Thinkpad R60 from 2007, a running Thinkpad T510 from 2012, and a modified running Thinkpad X61 (which I re-built as an X62 using the kit from 51nb in 2017 with a i7-5600U processor, 32 GB of RAM and a new display) in regular use. The latter required new batteries every 2 years, but was my main machine until 2 weeks ago when I replaced it with a ThinkCentre. During their time as my main machine, each of these laptops was actively used around 100 hours per week, and was often running for weeks without shutdown or reboot. The only thing that every broke was the display of the R60 which started to show several green vertical bars after 6 years, but replacement was easy.

JohnBooty3• 2 years ago

Amen. I got a crazy deal on a brand new 2020 M1 Max MBP with 64GB/2TB in 2023.

This is the best machine I have ever owned. It is so completely perfect in every way. I can't imagine replacing it for many many years.

markus_zhang2• 2 years ago

Congratulations, just curious what is the deal?

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

I have the same one, but everyone I know with an M series Mac says the same thing. These are the first machines in a long time built to not only last a decade but be used for it.

leokennis2• 2 years ago

I still use my MacBook Air M1 and given my current workloads (a bit of web development, general home office use and occasional video editing and encoding) I doubt I’ll need to replace it in the coming 5 years. That’ll be an almost 10 year lifespan.

misiek082• 2 years ago

M1 Pro compared to Intel was so big step ahead that I suppose we all are still surprised and excited. Quiet, long battery life and better performance. By a lot! I wonder if M4 really feels that much faster and better - having M1 Pro I'm not going to change quickly, but maybe Mac Mini will land some day.

Cthulhu_5• 2 years ago

Honestly it was a game changer. Before I'd never leave the house without a charger, nowadays I rarely bring it with me on office days, even with JS / front-end workloads.

(of course, everyone else has a macbook too, there's always someone that can lend me a charger. Bonus points that the newer macbooks support both magsafe and USB-C charging. Added bonus points that they brought back magsafe and HDMI ports)

medion• 2 years ago

Except for the usb c charge port - magcharge was the best invention and I’ll never understand why it was removed.

microtherion2• 2 years ago

It's the other way around, isn't it? MagSafe was removed in the 2016-2019 model years (not sure why; maybe to shave off another bit of thickness?), and then brought back in 2020 to MacBook Pro and 2022 to MacBook Air.

Personally, I practically never use MagSafe, because the convenience of USB C charging cables all over the house outweighs the advantages of MagSafe for me.

smileysteve2• 2 years ago

Pro tip, USB c magnetic adapter is cheap and works well enough

satvikpendem5• 2 years ago

I have the M1 MacBook Pro with MagSafe and I still charge it via USB C simply because I can't be bothered to carry around another cable when all of my other peripherals are USB C.

zmmmmm2• 2 years ago

It's annoyingly good! I want to upgrade, but especially having splurged on 64Gb RAM, I have very little justifiable reason.

mirchiseth• 2 years ago

reading this for my late 2013 MBP. It is so old that I can't install the latest of Darktable on it.

boogieknite• 2 years ago

Agree, even without whisky (this whisky: https://getwhisky.app).

With whisky i feel like id never need anything else. That said, the benchmark jump in the m4 has me thinking i should save up and grab a refurb in a year or two

slmjkdbtl• 2 years ago

I switched from a 2014 MacBook pro to a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, yeah the CPU is much faster, but the build quality and software is a huge step backwards. The trackpad is feels fake, not nearly as responsive, keyboard also feel not as solid. But now I'm already used to it.

seec3• 2 years ago

They also feel very bulky/innelegant while still being fragile for the most part and not really hitting workstation level territory.

I don't understand how people are enamored with those things, sure it's better in some way than what it was before but it's also very compromised for the price.

WuxiFingerHold3• 2 years ago

Yes, I got mine for 900 Euros (16, 256). Still working perfectly. What a bargain that was.

anArbitraryOne4• 2 years ago

I don't like my M1. It's really good for using Lightroom at the coffee shop, but absolutely sucks for developing software

_19qg2• 2 years ago

It's a very robust and capable small laptop. I'm typing this to a M1 Macbook Air.

The only thing to keep in mind, is that the M1 was the first CPU in the transition from Intel CPUs (+ AMD GPUs) to Apple Silicon. The M1 was still missing a bunch of things from earlier CPUs, which Apple over time added via the M1 Pro and other CPUs. Especially the graphics part was sufficient for a small laptop, but not for much beyond. Better GPUs and media engines were developed later. Today, the M3 in a Macbook Air or the M4 in the Macbook Pro have all of that.

For me the biggest surprise was how well the M1 Macbook Air actually worked. Apple did an outstanding job in the software & hardware transition.

lylo• 2 years ago

Yep. Bought an M1 Max in 2021 and it still feels fast, battery lasts forever. I’m sure the M4 would be even quicker (Lightroom, for example) but there’s little reason to consider an upgrade any time soon.

wkjagt• 2 years ago

I still have my base model M1 MacBook Air, and I never felt the need to upgrade. It never felt slow.

modmodmod• 2 years ago

8GB or 16GB?

pensatoio• 2 years ago

I upgraded to the M2 Air and I could have just kept the M1 Air this whole time. It was a perfect laptop.

xz0r• 2 years ago

I too bought a 2020 MBA M1, it was great initially, but now seems like its getting throttled, same goes with my iPhoneX, I used to love Apple, but its just pathetic that they throttle older devices just to get users to upgrade.

Toutouxc2• 2 years ago

No one is throttling your M1 MBA.

shrubble• 2 years ago

Disingenuous to mention the x86 based MacBooks as a basis for comparison in their benchmarks; they are trying to conflate current-gen Intel with what they shipped more than 4 years ago.

Are they going to claim that 16GB RAM is equivalent to 32GB on Intel laptops? (/sarc)

wiremine• 2 years ago

It could see it as disingenuous, or a targeted message to those users still on those older x86 machines.

Yabood• 2 years ago

Exactly how I read it. I have an intel model, and the press release felt like a targeted ad.

alsetmusic3• 2 years ago

Lot's of people don't upgrade on the cadence that users on this forum do. Someone was mentioning yesterday that they are trying to sell their Intel Mac {edit: on this forum] and asking advice on getting the best price. Someone else replied that they still had a 2017 model. I spoke to someone at my job (I'm IT) who told me they'd just ordered a new iMac to replace one that is 11 years old. There's no smoke and mirrors in letting such users know what they're in for.

izacus• 2 years ago

Right, it's obviously that, not a marketing trick to make numbers look much bigger while comparing to old CPUs and laptops :)

postexitus• 2 years ago

I have a 2013 Macbook Air as a casual browsing machine that's still going strong (by some definition of it) after a battery replacement.

michaelmueller• 2 years ago

Yup, I'm a developer who still primarily works on a 2018 Intel Mac. Apple's messaging felt very targeted towards me. Looking forward to getting the M4 Max as soon as possible!

hu3• 2 years ago

They are going to milk these horrendous crazy hot x86 thermally throttled macs performance comparisons for a decade.

musictubes2• 2 years ago

Ben Bejarin said that around 50% of the installed base is still using Macs with Intel chips. You’ll keep hearing that comparison until that number goes down.

throw0101a3• 2 years ago

All MacBook Pro models feature an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, a SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a headphone jack, along with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

No Wifi 7. So you get access to the 6 GHz band, but not some of the other features (preamble punching, OFDMA):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_7

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_6E

The iPhone 16s do have Wifi 7. Curious to know why they skipped it (and I wonder if the chipsets perhaps do support it, but it's a firmware/software-not-yet-ready thing).

sroussey12• 2 years ago

Yeah, this threw me as well. When the iMac didn’t support WiFi 7, I got a bit worried. I have an M2, so not going to get this, but the spouse needs a new Air and I figure that everything would have WiFi 7 by then, and now I don’t think so.

carstenhag2• 2 years ago

Faster is always nice, makes sense. But do you really need WiFi 7 features/speed? I don't know when I would notice a difference (on a laptop) between 600 or 1500 Mbit/s (just as an example). Can't download much anyhow as the storage will get full in minutes.

ygouzerh• 2 years ago

It looks like few people only are using Wifi 7 for now. Maybe they are going to include it in the next generation when more people will use it.

throw0101a3• 2 years ago

It looks like few people only are using Wifi 7 for now.

Machines can last and be used for years, and it would be a presumably very simple way to 'future proof' things.

And though the IEEE spec hasn't officially been ratified as I type this, it is set to be by the end of 2024. Network vendors are also shipping APs with the functionality, so in coming years we'll see a larger and larger infrastructure footprint going forward.

canucker20162• 2 years ago

Yeah, I thought that was weird. None of the Apple announcements this week had WiFi7 support, just 6E.

https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/wi-fi-6e-vs-wi-fi-7-whats...

Laptops/desktops (with 16GB+ of memory) could make use of the faster speed/more bandwidth aspects of WiFi7 better than smartphones (with 8GB of memory).

404mm2• 2 years ago

The lack of Wifi7 is a real bummer for me. I was hoping to ditch the 2.5Gbe dongle and just use WiFi.

mort966• 2 years ago

Hm why? Is 6E really so much worse than 7 in practice that 7 can replace wired for you but 6E can't? That's honestly really weird to me. What's the practical difference in latency, bandwidth or reliability you've experienced between 6E and 7?

cojo2• 2 years ago

I was quite surprised by this discrepancy as well (my new iPhone has 7, but the new MBP does not).

I had just assumed that for sure this would be the year I upgrade my M1 Max MBP to an M4 Max. I will not be doing so knowing that it lacks WiFi 7; as one of the child comments notes, I count on getting a solid 3 years out of my machine, so future-proofing carries some value (and I already have WiFi7 access points), and I download terabytes of data in some weeks for the work I do, and not having to Ethernet in at a fixed desk to do so efficiently will be a big enough win that I will wait another year before shelling out $6k “off-cycle”.

Big bummer for me. I was looking forward to performance gains next Friday.

pazimzadeh2• 2 years ago

they hold their value well so you could buy it this year and sell it next year when you buy the new one. you'd probably only lose ~$500

nightski• 2 years ago

I find it very odd that the new iMac has WiFi 7 but this does not... Also it is so aggravating they compare to 3 generations ago and not the previous generation in the marketing stats. It makes the entire post nearly useless.

parsimo20102• 2 years ago

It is very aggravating, but if they advertised a comparison to last year's model and showed you small performance gains you might not want to buy it.

A more charitable interpretation is that Apple only thinks that people with computers a few years old need to upgrade, and they aren't advertising to people with a <1 year old MacBook Pro.

klausa• 2 years ago

The iMac doesn’t have WiFi 7.

commandersaki2• 2 years ago

New 12MP Center Stage Camera. Will it support 4k?

perfect-blue• 2 years ago

I don't think so. They would have made that a huge deal.

Almondsetat2• 2 years ago

The 12MP will be used for better framing, there is still almost no use case for 4k quality video conferencing

bearjaws2• 2 years ago

It is truly sad how bad Zoom / Google Meet / Teams are when it comes to video quality.

I look at my local source vs the recording, and I am baffled.

After a decade of online meeting software, we still stream 480p quality it seems.

musictubes2• 2 years ago

4k for videoconferencing is nuts. The new camera should be an improvement over the old. Plus, being able to show your actual, physical desktop can be Andy too. Using your iPhone as the webcam will still probably give you the best quality especially if you are in a lower light situation.

minimaxir• 2 years ago

Tech specs confirm only 1080p recording.

zurfer• 2 years ago

If I remember correctly, the claim was that M3 is 1.6x faster than M1. M4 is now 1.8x faster than M1.

It sounds more exciting than M4 is 12.5% faster than M3.

tonygiorgio• 2 years ago

So far I’m only reading comments here about people wow’d by a lot of things it seemed that M3 pretty much also had. Not seeing anything new besides “little bit better specs”

MBCook2• 2 years ago

The M4 is architecturally better than the M3, especially on GPU features IIRC, but you’re right it’s not a total blow out.

Not all products got the M3, so in some lines this week is the first update in quite a while. In others like MBP it’s just the yearly bump. A good performing one, but the yearly bump.

sliken14• 2 years ago

Yes, upgrading from a m3 max to a m4 max would be a waste.

jumping_frog• 2 years ago

Maybe they are highlighting stats which will help people upgrade. Few will upgrade from M3 to M4. Many from M1 to M4. That's my guess.

azinman22• 2 years ago

Most people buying a new MacBook don’t have the previous version, they’re going much further back. That’s why you see both intel and m1 comparisons.

IshKebab2• 2 years ago

No it isn't. It's because 1.8x faster sounds better than 12% faster.

Back when Moore's law was still working they didn't skip generations like this.

nabakin• 2 years ago

It does and it gets even worse when you realize those stats are only true under very specific circumstances, not typical computer usage. If you benchmarked based on typical computer usage, I think you'd only see gains of 5% or less.

tigen• 2 years ago

Anyone know of articles that deep dive into "snappiness" or "feel" computer experiences?

Everyone knows SSDs made a big difference in user experience. For the CPU, normally if you aren't gaming at high settings or "crunching" something (compiling or processing video etc.) then it's not obvious why CPU upgrades should be making much difference even vs. years-old Intel chips, in terms of that feel.

There is the issue of running heavy JS sites in browsers but I can avoid those.

The main issue seems to be how the OS itself is optimized for snappiness, and how well it's caching/preloading things. I've noticed Windows 10 file system caching seems to be not very sophisticated for example... it goes to disk too often for things I've accessed recently-but-not-immediately-prior.

Similarly when it comes to generating heat, if laptops are getting hot even while doing undemanding office tasks with huge periods of idle time then basically it points to stupid software -- or let's say poorly balanced (likely aimed purely at benchmark numbers than user experience).

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-...

canucker20162• 2 years ago

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M4#Comparison_with_other...

M4 is built with TSMC's 2nd Gen 3nm process. M3 is on the 1st gen 3nm.

For the base M3 vs base M4:

- the CPU (4P+4E) & GPU (8) core counts are the same

- NPU perf is slightly better for M4, I think, (M4's 38TOPS @ INT8 vs M3's 18TOPS @ INT16)

- Memory Bandwidth is higher for M4 (120 GB/s vs 102.4 GB/s)

- M4 has a higher TDP (22W vs 20W)

- M4 has higher transistor count (28B vs 25B)

dsv3099i2• 2 years ago

If your goal is to sell more MBPs (and this is marketing presentation) then, judging by the number of comments that have the phrase "my M1" and the top comment, it seems like M1 vs M4 is the right comparison to make. Too many people are sticking with their M1 machines. Including me.

It's actually interesting to think about. Is there a speed multiplier that would get me off this machine? I'm not sure there is. For my use case the machine performance is not my productivity bottleneck. HN on the otherhand... That one needs to be attenuated. :)

spacedcowboy5• 2 years ago

There aren't that many people that upgrade something like an MBP every year, most of us keep them longer than that.

I've just ordered an (almost) top-of-the-range MBP Max, my current machine is an MBP M1-max, so the comparisons are pretty much spot-on for me.

Selling the M1 Ultra Studio to help pay for the M4 MBP Max, I don't think I need the Studio any more, with the M4 being so much faster.

zmmmmm2• 2 years ago

I have to admit, 4 generations in, 1.8x is decent but slightly disappointing all the same.

I'd really like to justify upgrading, but a $4k+ spend needs to hit greater than 2x for me to feel it's justified. 1.8x is still "kind of the same" as what I have already.

pcurve• 2 years ago

They actually omitted M2 from a lot of the comparisons, which isn't surprising because M3 was only 10-15% faster.

david_allison2• 2 years ago

MacBook Pro with M4 Max enables:
Up to 4.6x faster build performance when compiling code in Xcode when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9, and up to 2.2x faster when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max.

OK, that's finally a reason to upgrade from my M1.

dagmx2• 2 years ago

Announcement video as well

https://youtu.be/G0cmfY7qdmY?si=vbgIr8zn9EzB2Xam

LeifCarrotson• 2 years ago

I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:

...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth...

I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with DDR2 SODIMMs. I switched to Dell Precision and Lenovo P-series workstations with user-upgradeable storage and memory... but I've got 64GB of RAM in the old 2019 Thinkpad P53 I'm using right now. A unified memory space is neat, but is it worth sacrificing that much space? I typically have a VM or two running, and in the host OS and VMs, today's software is hungry for RAM and it's typically cheap and upgradeable outside of the Apple ecosystem.

jsheard6• 2 years ago

I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:

That's an architectural limitation of the base M4 chip, if you go up to the M4 Pro version you can get up to 48GB, and the M4 Max goes up to 128GB.

FireBeyond3• 2 years ago

The "base level" Max is limited at 36GB. You have to get the bigger Max to get more.

latortuga• 2 years ago

The new mac mini also has an M4 Pro that goes up to 64GB.

Octoth0rpe• 2 years ago

The max memory is dependent on which tier M4 chip you get. The M4 max chip will let you configure up to 128gb of ram

MaxDPS• 2 years ago

It looks like the 14 core M4 Max only allows 36GB of ram. The M4 Pro allows for up to 48GB. It's a bit confusing.

post-it2• 2 years ago

I haven't done measurements on this, but my Macbook Pro feels much faster at swapping than any Linux or Windows device I've used. I've never used an M.2 SSD so maybe that would be comparable, but swapping is pretty much seamless. There's also some kind of memory compression going on according to Activity Monitor, not sure if that's normal on other OSes.

thimabi6• 2 years ago

Yes, other M.2 SSDs have comparable performance when swapping, and other operating systems compress memory, too — though I believe not as much as MacOS.

Although machines with Apple Silicon swap flawlessly, I worry about degrading the SSD, which is non-replaceable. So ultimately I pay for more RAM and not need swapping at all.

lynguist• 2 years ago

No it's true.

Apple has hardware accelerated compressed swapping.

Windows has compressed swapping.

And Linux is a mess. You have to manually configure a non-resizable compressed zram, or use it without compression on a non-resizable swap partition.

redundantly• 2 years ago

The M4 tops off at 32 GB

The M4 Pro goes up to 48 GB

The M4 Max can have up to 128 GB

SparkyMcUnicorn• 2 years ago

It doesn't look this cut and dry.

M4 Max 14 core has a single option of 36GB.

M4 Max 16 core lets you go up to 128GB.

So you can actually get more ram with the Pro than the base level Max.

ldoughty• 2 years ago

It seems you need the M4 Max with the 40-core GPU to go over 36GB.

The M4 Pro with 14‑core CPU & 20‑core GPU can do 48GB.

If you're looking for ~>36-48GB memory, here's the options:

$2,800 = 48GB, Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU

$3,200 = 36GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU

$3,600 = 48GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU

So the M4 Pro could get you a lot of memory, but less GPU cores. Not sure how much those GPU cores factor in to performance, I only really hear complaints about the memory limits... Something to consider if looking to buy in this range of memory.

Of course, a lot of people here probably consider it not a big deal to throw an extra 3 grand on hardware, but I'm a hobbyist in academia when it comes to AI, I don't big 6-figure salaries :-)

fckgw6• 2 years ago

On the standard M4 processor. If you move the M4 Pro it tops out at 48gb or moving to the M4 Max goes up to 128gb.

41995701• 2 years ago

Weird that the M4 Pro in the Mac mini can go up to 64GB. Maybe a size limitation on the MBP motherboard or SOC package?

Tepix3• 2 years ago

The 96GB RAM option of the M3 Max disappeared.

MaysonL• 2 years ago

Interesting tidbit: MacBook Airs also now start at 16GB. Same price!

wslh3• 2 years ago

I really like these new devices, but I’ve found that the latest MacBook Air (M3) is sufficient for my needs as a manager and casual developer. My MacBook Pro M1 Max has essentially become a desktop due to its support for multiple monitors, but since the Mac Mini M4 Pro can also support up to three external displays, I’m considering selling the MacBook Pro and switching to the Mini. I’ve also noticed that the MacBook Pro’s battery, as a portable device, is less efficient in terms of performance/battery (for my usage) compared to the MacBook Air.

Regarding LLMs, the hottest topic here nowadays, I plan to either use the cloud or return to a bare-metal PC.

doctoboggan3• 2 years ago

Does anyone know of any good deals on the older models of apple laptops? Now is usually a great time to purchase (a still very capable) older model.

2wrist• 2 years ago

The refurbished store is always a good place to have a look through.

fckgw6• 2 years ago

Most retailers have had the older models on closeout for a few weeks now. Best Buy, Amazon and Costco have had the M3 models for a few hundred off depending on models.

tencentshill• 2 years ago

The M-series macbooks depreciate in value far slower than any of the Intel models. M1 base models can still sell for nearly $1k. It's difficult to find a really good deal.

bigtex• 2 years ago

Watch SlickDeals. I think it was this time last year where lots of refurbs/2 generation old machines were going for massive discounts. Granted they were M1 machines, but some had 64GB RAM and 4TB drives for like $2700. Microcenter and B&H are good ones to watch as well.

commandersaki2• 2 years ago

Hm, the M3 MacBook Pro had a 96GB of ram model (which is what I have). I wonder why it's not an option with the M4.

maxioatic2• 2 years ago

It is interesting they only support 64gb and then jump to 128gb. It seems like a money play since it's $1,000 to upgrade for 128, and if you're running something that needs more than 64 (like LLMs?) you kind of have no choice.

sliken14• 2 years ago

M2 pro has 256 bit wide memory, mostly benefiting the GPU perf.

M3 pro has 192 bit wide memory, GPU improvements mostly offset the decrease in memory bandwidth. This leads to memory options like 96GB.

M4 pro has 256 bit wide memory, thus the factor of 2 memory options.

wtallis12• 2 years ago

The 96GB option was with the M2 Max and M3 Max chips, not the M2 Pro or M3 Pro.

DRAM chips don't just come in power of two sizes anymore. You can even buy 24GB DDR5 DIMMs.

thimabi6• 2 years ago

Nice to see they increased the number of performance cores in the M4 Pro, compared to the M3 Pro. Though I am worried about the impact of this change on battery life on the MBPs.

Another positive development was bumping up baseline amounts of RAM. They kept selling machines with just 8 gigabytes of RAM for way longer than they should have. It might be fine for many workflows, but feels weird on “pro” machines at their price points.

I’m sure Apple has been coerced to up its game because of AI. Yet we can rejoice in seeing their laptop hardware, which already surpassed the competition, become even better.

snjnlsn• 2 years ago

I'm curious why they decided to go this route, but glad to see it. Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?

In January, after researching, I bought an apple restored MBP with an M2 Max over an M3 Pro/Max machine because of the performance/efficiency core ratio. I do a lot of music production in DAWs, and many, even Apple's Logic Pro don't really make use of efficiency cores. I'm curious about what restraints have led to this.. but perhaps this also factors into Apple's choice to increase the ratio of performance/efficiency cores.

thimabi6• 2 years ago

Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?

I believe that’s the case. Most times, the performance cores on my M3 Pro laptop remain idle.

What I don’t understand is why battery life isn’t more like that of the MacBook Airs when not using the full power of the SOC. Maybe that’s the downside of having a better display.

mcculley4• 2 years ago

Still, no matter how much you are willing to spend, you cannot buy a MacBook Pro with an LTE modem, like the ones in the iPhone, iPad, and Watch.

trogdor5• 2 years ago

I wonder if one of the obstacles is the amount of data that would likely be used.

Most cellular carriers offer unlimited on-device data plans, but they cap data for tethering. Integrating an LTE modem into a laptop essentially requires a mobile data plan with unlimited tethering - which, AFAIK, doesn’t exist at the moment. I’m not sure why.

mcculley4• 2 years ago

I think the biggest obstacle is the Qualcomm patents. There is no good reason why a MacBook Pro cannot have a feature that Dells have.

wpm4• 2 years ago

Integrating an LTE modem into an iPad requires a mobile data plan, and thats about it. It's not "tethered" if its built into the device.

I've always heard that patent disputes were at the root of the lack of a modem option. Apple had a prototype MacBook Pro back in the early Intel days IIRC but it was never released.

Maybe if Apple ever gets their in-house modems working, we'll see them on all of the product lines, but until then, it's a niche use case that likely isn't causing them to lose a ton of sales.

jitl3• 2 years ago

Tethering to an iPhone is so easy though - just select it in the Wifi menu. I'm not sure if I'd ever pay for an LTE modem option. I'm sure it would be better efficiency and performance to have it built-in, but I wouldn't think many people care enough about that small difference to offer it as an option.

mcculley4• 2 years ago

I use the tethering quite often. I have for years. It is flaky and burns two batteries instead of one. I agree that many people do not care. Some of us who are traveling a lot are willing to pay for more options.

Detrytus2• 2 years ago

It's not about efficiency or performance, it's about not having to own the iPhone in the first place. Just put a SIM card inside the laptop and forget about it. Windows laptops can even seamlessly switch between wifi and LTE depending on which one is available. But of course Apple would never allow that because they want to force you to own the full set of Apple devices. Laptop being self-sufficient would be against their policy.

Not to mention that in the US the cell phone carriers artificially limit tethering speed or put data caps on it when you tether from your phone. You have to buy a dedicated data-only plan and modem.

azinman22• 2 years ago

No wifi 7? Are others shipping it?

kristofferR3• 2 years ago

Yup, Wi-Fi 7 devices have been shipping for over a year. My Odin 2 portable game console has Wi-Fi 7.

electriclove2• 2 years ago

Strange because their latest iPhones do have Wifi 7

TIPSIO2• 2 years ago

These chips are incredible. Even my M1 MBP from 2020 still feels so ridiculously fast for everyday basic use and coding.

Is an upgrade really worth it?

thimabi6• 2 years ago

I guess it’s only worth it for people who would really benefit from the speed bump — those who push their machines to the limit and work under tight schedules.

I myself don’t need so much performance, so I tend to keep my devices for many, many years.

jitl3• 2 years ago

I don’t think it will “feel” much faster like the Intel -> M1 where overall system latency especially around swap & memory pressure got much much better.

If you do any amount of 100% CPU work that blocks your workflow, like waiting for a compiler or typechecker, I think M1 -> M4 is going to be worth it. A few of my peers at the office went M1->M3 and like the faster compile times.

Like, a 20 minute build on M1 becoming a 10 minute build on M4, or a 2 minute build on M1 becoming a 1 minute build on M4, is nothing to scoff at.

htk2• 2 years ago

I have a MBP M1 16GB at home, and a MBP M3 128GB at work. They feel the same: very fast. When I benchmark things I can see the difference (or when fiddling with larger LLM models), other than that, the M1 is still great and feels faster and more enjoyable than any Windows machine I interact with.

sib• 2 years ago

I do a lot of (high-end mirrorless camera, ~45MP, 14 bits/pixel raw files) photo processing. There are many individual steps in Photoshop, Lightroom, or various plug-ins that take ~10 seconds on my M1 Max MBP. It definitely doesn't feel fast. I'm planning to upgrade to one of these.

carlgreene• 2 years ago

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years.

New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters.

Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve.

Can stuff be faster? Technically of course. But this is the first machine that even after several years I’ve not caught myself once wishing that it was faster or had more RAM. Not once.

Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.

extr• 2 years ago

I've owned an M1 MBP base model since 2021 and I just got an M3 Max for work. I was curious to see if it "felt" different and was contemplating an upgrade to M4. You know what? It doesn't really feel different. I think my browser opens about 1 second faster from a cold start. But other than that, no perceptible difference day to day.

charliebwrites2• 2 years ago

This is how I feel about the last few iPhones as well

I upgraded from a 13 pro to a 15 pro expecting zippier performance and it feels almost identical if not weirdly a bit slower in rendering and typing

I wonder what it will take to make Mac/iOS feel faster

ToucanLoucan• 2 years ago

Can confirm. I have an M2 Air from work and an M1 Pro for personal, and tbh, both absolutely fly. I haven't had a serious reason to upgrade. The only reason I do kind of want to swap out my M1 Pro is because the 13" screen is a wee small, but I also use the thing docked more often than not so it's very hard to justify spending the money.

stringsandchars• 2 years ago

It doesn't really feel different.

My work machine was upgraded from an M1 with 16GB of RAM to an M3 Max with 36GB and the difference in Xcode compile times is beyond belief: I went from something like 1-2 minutes to 15-20 seconds.

Obviously if opening a browser is the most taxing thing your machine is doing the difference will be minimal. But video or music editing, application-compiling and other intensive tasks, then the upgrade is PHENOMENAL.

jcalabro• 2 years ago

I've found compile times on large C++ code bases to be the only thing I really notice improving. I recently upgraded my work machine from a 2017 i7 to a shiny new Ryzen 9 9950x and my clean compile times went from 3.5 minutes to 15 seconds haha. When I compile with an M2 Max, it's about 30s, so decent for a laptop, but also it was 2x the price of my new desktop workstation.

thadk• 2 years ago

The biggest difference I’ve seen is iPad Sidecar mode works far more reliably with the M3 Max than the M1 Max. There have been incremental improvements in speed and nits too, but having Sidecar not randomly crash once a day once on M3 was very nice.

hughrj• 2 years ago

IMO Apple Silicon is just that good; have played No Man’s Sky on a new MB Air 13” at 1080p and mid to high settings.

An MB Air with an M3 and no fan out gamed my old gtx 1080 box which stuttered on NMS size games all the time

Shows just how poorly Intel has done. That company should be razed to the ground figuratively and the infrastructure given to a new generation of chip makers; the last one is clearly out of their element

OskarS• 2 years ago

Yep, the same, M1 Pro from 2021. It's remarkable how snappy it still feels years later, and I still virtually never hear the fan. The M-series of chips is a really remarkable achievement in hardware.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

The M1 series was too good. Blows Intel Macs out of the water. But I still have an M1 Max. It’s fantastic.

kristofferR3• 2 years ago

Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.

I have a Macbook Air M1 that I'd like to upgrade, but they're not making it easy. I promised myself a couple of years ago I'll never buy a new expensive computing device/phone unless it supports 120 hertz and Wi-Fi 7, a pretty reasonable request I think.

I got the iPhone 16 Pro, guess I can wait another year for a new Macbook (hopefully the Air will have a decent display by then, I'm not too keen to downgrade the portability just to get a good display).

JimDabell• 2 years ago

Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.

They always have. If you want an objective measure of planned obsolescence, look at the resale value. Apple products hold their resale value better than pretty much every competitor because they stay useful for far longer.

rbanffy13• 2 years ago

Apple equipment always last a long time and retain value on the second-hand market.

babblingdweeb• 2 years ago

Similar for me. MacBook Air M1 (8 cpu / 8 gpu; 16 GB RAM)...running in or out of clamshell with a 5k monitor, I rarely notice issues. Typically, if I'm working very inefficiently (obnoxious amount of tabs with Safari and Chrome; mostly web apps, Slack, Zoom, Postman, and vscode), I'll notice a minor lag during a video call while screen sharing...even then, it still keeps up.

(Old Pentium Pro, PII, multi chip desktop days) -- When I did a different type of work, I would be in love with these new chips. I just don't throw as much at my computer anymore outside of things being RAM heavy.

The M1 (with 16 GB ram) is really an amazing chip. I'm with you, outside of a repair/replacement? I'm happy to wait for 120hz refresh, faster wifi, and longer battery life.

maxvisser• 2 years ago

Same for me. The only reason to replace it, is that my M1 pro’s SSD or battery will go bad or if I accidentally drop the machine and something breaks.

rbanffy13• 2 years ago

I am replacing a Dell laptop because the case is cracking, not because it's too slow (it isn't lightning fast, of course, but it sure is fast enough for casual use).

fckgw6• 2 years ago

I replaced my M1 Air battery last year and it's still going like a champ. $129 for another 3 years of life is a bargain.

rbanffy13• 2 years ago

A lot of my work can be easily done with a Celeron - it's editing source, compiling very little, running tests on Python code, running small Docker containers and so on. Could it be faster? Of course! Do I need it to be faster? Not really.

I am due to update my Mac mini because my current one can't run Sonoma, but, apart from that, it's a lovely little box with more than enough power for me.

klooney• 2 years ago

How's the performance of Gmail on the Celeron? That's always my sticking point for older computers. The fancy web applications really drag.

mysteria• 2 years ago

I still use Ivy Bridge and Haswell workstations (with Linux, SSD and discrete GPU) as my daily drivers and for the things I do they still feel fast. Honestly a new Celeron probably beats them performance wise.

The modern AMD or Intel desktops I've tried obviously are much faster when performing large builds and such but for general computing, web browsing, and so forth I literally don't feel much of a difference. Now for mobile devices it's a different story due to the increased efficiency and hence battery life.

jchw11• 2 years ago

Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.

Apple's M1 came at a really interesting point. Intel was still dominating the laptop game for Windows laptops, but generational improvements felt pretty lame. A whole lot of money for mediocre performance gains, high heat output and not very impressive battery. The laptop ecosystem changed rapidly as not only the Apple M1 arrived, but also AMD started to gain real prominence in the laptop market after hitting pretty big in the desktop and data center CPU market. (Addendum: and FWIW, Intel has also gotten a fair bit better at mobile too in the meantime. Their recent mobile chipsets have shown good efficiency improvements.)

If Qualcomm's Windows on ARM efforts live past the ARM lawsuit, I imagine a couple generations from now they could also have a fairly compelling product. In my eyes, there has never been a better time to buy a laptop.

(Obligatory: I do have an M2 laptop in my possession from work. The hardware is very nice, it beats the battery life on my AMD laptop even if the AMD laptop chews through some compute a bit faster. That said, I love the AMD laptop because it runs Linux really well. I've tried Asahi on an M1 Mac Mini, it is very cool but not something I'd consider daily driving soon.)

dijit• 2 years ago

Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.

You say that, but I get extremely frustrated at how slow my Surface Pro 10 is (with an Ultra 7 165U).

It could be Windows of course, but this is a much more modern machine than my Macbook Air (M1) and feels like it's almost 10 years old at times in comparison. - despite being 3-4 years newer.

acomjean• 2 years ago

I’ll agree the AMD laptops from the past couple of years are really impressive. They are fast enough that I’ve done some bioinformatics work on one.

Battery life is decent.

At this point I’m not switching from laptop Linux. The machines can even game (thanks proton/steam)

chx• 2 years ago

I am on Intel TGL currently and can't wait for Strix Halo next year. That is truly something else, it's nothing we have seen in notebooks before iGPU wise.

wing-_-nuts• 2 years ago

Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks.

I've had my xps 13 since 2016. Really the only fault I have against it nowadays is that 8gb of ram is not sufficient to run intellij anymore (hell, sometimes it even bogs down my 16gb mbp).

Now, I've also built an absolute beast of a workstation with a 7800x3d, 64gb ram, 24 gb vram and a fast ssd. Is it faster than both? Yeah. Is my old xps slow enough to annoy me? Not really. Youtube has been sluggish to load / render here lately but I think that's much more that google is making changes to make firefox / ublock a worse experience than any fault of the laptop.

bjackman• 2 years ago

I only do coding & browsing so maybe I'm a weak example but I find this even with my pretty old Intel laptops these days.

My Skylake one (I think that would be 6 years old now?) is doing absolutely fine. My Broadwell one is starting to feel a little aged but perfectly usable, I wouldn't even _consider_ upgrading it if I was in the bottom 95% of global income.

Compiling is very slow on these, but I think I'd avoid compilation on my laptop even if I had a cutting edge CPU?

sangnoir• 2 years ago

If Qualcomm's Windows on ARM efforts live past the ARM lawsuit

FWIW, Qualcomm cancelled orders of its Windows devkit and issued refunds before the lawsuit. That is probably not a good sign

dawnerd• 2 years ago

Guess that’s why most of their comparisons are with the older Intel Macs.

Cthulhu_5• 2 years ago

And M1 from 4 years ago instead of M3 from last year; while a 2x speed improvement in the benchmarks they listed is good, it also shows that the M series CPUs see incremental improvements, not exponential or revolutionary. I get the feeling - but a CPU expert can correct me / say more - that their base design is mostly unchanged since M1, but the manufacturing process has improved (leading to less power consumption/heat), the amount of cores has increased, and they added specialized hardware for AI-related workloads.

That said, they are in a very comfortable position right now, with neither Intel, AMD, or another competitor able to produce anything close to the bang-for-watt that Apple is managing. Little pressure from behind them to push for more performance.

jart10• 2 years ago

I hate to say it but that's like a boomer saying they never felt the need to buy a computer, because they've never wished their pen and paper goes faster. Or a UNIX greybeard saying they don't need a Mac since they don't think its GUI would make their terminal go any faster. If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don't need to upgrade. A Macbook M1 can't run half the stuff posted on Hugging Face these days. Even my 128gb Mac Studio isn't nearly enough.

rconti3• 2 years ago

I think the difference is that AI is a very narrow niche/hobby at the moment. Of course if you're in that niche having more horsepower is critical. But your boomer/greybeard comparisons fall flat because they're generally about age or being set in your ways. I don't think "not being into AI image generation" is (currently) about being stuck in your ways.

To me it's more like 3d printing as a niche/hobby.

ach9l2• 2 years ago

you could not say this better than this.

gniv2• 2 years ago

A Macbook M1 can't run half the stuff posted on Hugging Face these days.

Example?

mrweasel• 2 years ago

If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don't need to upgrade.

That's me, I don't give a shit about AI, video editing, modern gaming or Kubernetes. That newest and heaviest piece of software I care about is VSCode. So I think you're absolutely correct. Most things new since Docker and VSCode has not contributed massively to how I work and most of the things I do could be done just fine 8-10 years ago.

dsv3099i2• 2 years ago

That’s interesting because I would’ve thought having strong local compute was the old way of thinking. I run huge jobs that consume very large amounts of compute. But the machines doing the work aren’t even in the same state I’m in. Then again maybe I’m even older as I’m basically on the terminal server / mainframe compute model. :)

nonameiguess2• 2 years ago

So every user of a computer that doesn't create their own home-grown ML models is a boomer? This can't possibly be a generational thing. Just about everyone on the planet is at a place in their life where they don't make their own AIs.

danielbln2• 2 years ago

I work with AI models all day every day, keep up with everything, love frontier tech, I love and breathe LLMs. And I, like OP, haven't seen the need to upgrade from the M1 MBP because it runs the small 1-7B models just fine, and anything bigger I want on some GPU instance anyway, or I want a frontier model which wouldn't run on the newest and biggest MBP. So it's not just us Boomers hating on new stuff, the M series MacBooks are just really good.

fstephany• 2 years ago

I have the same feeling performance-wise with the laptop I bought in 2020 with a Ryzen 7 4800H.

But it's a heavy brick with a short battery life compared to the M1/2/3 Mac.

JyB• 2 years ago

Same feeling. The jump from all the previous laptops I owned to an M1 was an incredible jump. The thing is fast, has amazing battery life and stays cold. Never felt the need to upgrade.

bhouston7• 2 years ago

I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP.

I upgraded my M1 MBP to a MacBook Air M3 15" and it was a major upgrade. It is the same weight but 40% faster and so much nicer to work on while on the sofa or traveling. The screen is also brighter.

I think very few people actually do need the heavy MBPs, especially not the web/full-stack devs who populate Hacker News.

EDIT: The screens are not different in terms of brightness.

052• 2 years ago

Pretty sure Air displays don't support HDR, are they really brighter?

rizzaxc• 2 years ago

the Air doesn't have ProMotion right? that feature is non-negotiable on any display for me nowadays

tebbers• 2 years ago

Looked at it but ruled out the Air due to lack of ports and limited RAM upgrades.

macNchz• 2 years ago

I think very few people actually do need the heavy MBPs, especially not the web/full-stack devs who populate Hacker News.

I can fairly easily get my M1 Air to have thermal issues while on extended video calls with some Docker containers running, and have been on calls with others having the same issue. Kind of sucks if it's, say, an important demo. I mostly use it as a thin client to my desktop when I'm away from home, so it's not really an issue, but if I were using it as a primary device I'd want a machine with a fan.

rconti3• 2 years ago

It's so nice being able to advise a family member who is looking to upgrade their intel Mac to something new, and just tell them to buy whatever is out, not worry about release dates, not worry about things being out of date, and so on.

The latest of whatever you have will be so much better than the intel one, and the next advances will be so marginal, that it's not even worth looking at a buyer's guide.

baq• 2 years ago

M3 Air with 16gb (base config as of today) is potentially a decade’s worth of computer. Amazing value.

1R053• 2 years ago

probably the next update wave is coming from the need of AI features for more local memory and compute. The software is just not there yet in usual tasks but it's just a question of time I guess. Of course there will be the pressure to do that in the cloud as usual, but local compute will always remain a market.

and probably it's good that at least one of the big players has a business model that supports driving that forward

prmoustache• 2 years ago

Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.

I feel the same of my laptop of 2011 so I guess it is partly age (not feeling the urge to always have the greatest) and partly it is non LLM and gaming related computing is not demanding enough to force us to upgrade.

data-ottawa• 2 years ago

I think the last decade had an explosion in the amount of resources browsers needed and used (partly workloads moving over, partly moving to more advanced web frameworks, partly electron apps proliferating).

The last few years Chrome seems to have stepped up energy and memory use, which impacts most casual use these days. Safari has also become more efficient, but it never felt bloated the way Chrome used to.

fullspectrumdev• 2 years ago

Tbf, the only thing I miss with my M2 MacBook is the ability to run x86_64 VM’s with decent performance locally.

I’ve tried a bunch of ways to do this - and frankly the translation overhead is absolute pants currently.

Not a showstopper though, for the 20-30% of complete pain in the ass cases where I can’t easily offload the job onto a VPS or a NUC or something, I just have a ThinkPad.

turnsout• 2 years ago

Same boat—I'm on a lowly M1 MacBook Air, and haven't felt any need to upgrade (SwiftUI development, video editing, you name it), which is wild for a nearly 4 year-old laptop.

frantathefranta• 2 years ago

Out of curiosity and also because I'm wondering which specification to potentially buy in the future, how much RAM does your MBP have?

nhumrich2• 2 years ago

I dont think this has anything to do with the hardware. I think we have entered an age where users in general are not upgrading. As such, software can't demand more and more performance. The M1 came out at a time where mostly all hardware innovation had staggered. Default RAM in a laptop has been 16G for over 5 years. 2 years ago, you couldn't even get more than 16 in most laptops. As such, software hardware requirements havent changed. So any modern CPU is going to feel overpowered. This isn't unique to M1's.

vlovich1232• 2 years ago

That’s because today’s hw is perfectly capable of running tomorrow’s software at reasonable speed. There aren’t huge drivers of new functionality that needs new software. Displays are fantastic, cellular speeds are amazing and can stream video, battery life is excellent, UIs are smooth with no jankiness, and cameras are good enough.

Why would people feel the need to upgrade?

And this applies already to phones. Laptops have been slowing for even longer.

mixmastamyk6• 2 years ago

I standardized on 16gb for my laptops over 10 years ago. I keep a late 2013 MBP with 16 for testing projects on, separate from my main Linux box.

Getting an extra five years of longevity (after RAM became fixed) for an extra 10% was a no-brainer imho.

samatman• 2 years ago

I upgraded from the last 16" MBP Intel sold to the first 16" MBP M1 available.

It is absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind: the hardware.

stouset4• 2 years ago

I feel exactly the same. The one thing that would get me to pull the trigger on a newer one is if they start supporting SVE2 instructions, which would be super useful for a specific programming project I’ve been playing with.

fellowniusmonk2• 2 years ago

I got an MBP M1 with 32gb of RAM. It'll probably be another 2-3 years or longer before I feel the pressure to upgrade if not longer. I've even started gaming (something I dropped nearly 20 years ago when I switched to mac) again due to Geforce Now, I just don't see the reason.

Frankly though, if the mac mini was a slightly lower price point I'd definitely create my own mac mini cluster for my AI home lab.

mattgreenrocks• 2 years ago

My 2019 Intel MBP is getting long in the tooth. These M4 Pros look great to me.

The base model is perfect. Now to decide between the M3/M4 Air and the M4 Pro.

charliebwrites2• 2 years ago

I’m using the M3 Air 13 in (splurged for 24 GB of RAM, I’m sure 16 is fine) to make iOS apps in Xcode and produce music in Ableton and it’s been more than performant for those tasks

Only downside is the screen. The brightness sort of has to be maxed out to be readable and viewing at a wrong angle makes even that imperfect

That said it’s about the same size / weight as an iPad Pro which feels much more portable than a pro device

digitalsushi• 2 years ago

when the hardware wait time is the same as the duration of my impulsive decisions i no longer have a hardware speed problem, i have a software suggestion problem

jrochkind12• 2 years ago

I bought my M1 Pro MBP in 2021. Gave it 16G of RAM and a 1TB HD. I plan to keep it until circa 2031.

jrochkind12• 2 years ago

Ironically, the day after I posted that my trackpad on my 2021 M1 Pro MBP stopped working. Doh!

gniv2• 2 years ago

I've had Macs before, from work, but there is something about the M1 Pro that feels like a major step up.

Only recently I noticed some slowness. I think Google Photos changed something and they show photos in HDR and it causes unsmooth scrolling. I wonder if it's something fixable on Google's side though.

microtonal4• 2 years ago

Same. I used to upgrade every 1.5 years or so. But with every Apple Silicon generation so far I have felt that there are really no good reasons to upgrade. I have a MacBook M3 Pro for work, but there are no convincing differences compared to the M1 Pro.

In fact, I bought a highly discounted Mac Studio with M1 Ultra because the M1 is still so good and it gives me 10Gbit ethernet, 20 cores and a lot of memory.

The only thing I am thinking about is going back to the MacBook Air again since I like the lighter form factor. But the display, 24 GiB max RAM and only 2 Thunderbolt ports would be a significant downgrade.

sylens• 2 years ago

Agreed. Also rocking a M1 Pro MBP and can’t see myself replacing it until it dies

AISnakeOil• 2 years ago

This is how it feels to own a desktop computer.

matwood2• 2 years ago

Same. I have an M1 Max 64GB. It has great battery life and I never feel myself waiting on anything. Such an amazing computer all around.

mark_l_watson2• 2 years ago

I think regretting Mac upgrades is a real thing, at least for me. I got a 32G Mac mini in January to run local LLMs. While it does so beautifully, there are now smaller LLMs that run fine on my very old 8G M1 MacBook Pro, and these newer smaller models do almost all of what I want for NLP tasks, data transformation, RAG, etc. I feel like I wasted my money.

xenospn• 2 years ago

Which ones in particular? I have an M2 air with 8GB, and doing some RAG development locally would be fantastic. I tried running Ollama with llama3.2 and it predictably bombed.

tarruda• 2 years ago

Small models retain much less of the knowledge they were trained on, especially when quantized.

One good use case for 32gb Mac is being able to run 8b models at full precision, something that is not possible with 8-16gb macs

fwip3• 2 years ago

You can sell it, get most of your money back.

JodieBenitez• 2 years ago

Ditto... will probably upgrade when the battery is dead !

andrei_says_2• 2 years ago

I got 6+ years out of my last intel MacBook Pro and expect at least the same from my M1 Max. Both have MagSafe and hdmi output :)

crazygringo• 2 years ago

Yup, honestly the main reason I'd like to upgrade from my M1 MBA is the newer webcams are 1080p instead of 720p, and particularly much better in low light like in the evening.

Has nothing whatsoever to do with CPU/memory/etc.

rafaelmn• 2 years ago

If you're in the ecosystem get an iphone mount - image quality is unreal compared to anything short of some fancy DSLR setup - it is some setup but not much with magnets in iphone.

HumblyTossed3• 2 years ago

But this ad is specifically for you! (Well, and those pesky consumers clinging on to that i7!):

Up to 7x faster image processing in Affinity Photo when compared to the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with Core i7, and up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1.

madeofpalk2• 2 years ago

Work just upgraded my M1 Pro to M3 Pro and I don't notice any difference except for now having two laptops.

kromokromo• 2 years ago

100% agree on this. Ive had this thing for 3 years and I still appreciate how good it is. Of course the M4 tingles my desire for new cool toys, but I honestly don´t think I would notice much difference with my current use.

noman-land2• 2 years ago

I would normally never upgrade so soon after getting an M1 but running local LLMs is extremely cool and useful to the point where I'd want the extra RAM and CPU to run larger models more quickly.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

I have a 64gb M1 Max and already do that

but yes, I was looking at and anticipating the max RAM on the M4 as well as the max memory speed

128gb and 546GB/s memory bandwidth

I like it, I don't know yet on an upgrade. But I like it. Was hoping for more RAM actually, but this is nice.

astrostl• 2 years ago

I'm bumping from a still-excellent M1 MAX / 64GB to M4 MAX / 128GB, mostly for local GenAI. It gives me some other uplift and also enables me to sell this system while it's still attractive. I'm able to exhaust local 7B models fairly easily on it.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

I have a 2009 and a 2018 Windows laptops.

The only reason the 2009 one now gets little use, is its motherboard now has some electronic issues, otherwise it would serve me perfectly well.

davidhariri• 2 years ago

I think this is confirmed by the fact software vendors are still not taking advantage of ARM chips maximum performance.

Where this might shift is as we start using more applications that are powered by locally running LLMs.

crystal_revenge• 2 years ago

On the other side, as someone doing a lot of work in the GenAI space, I'm simultaneously amazed that I can run Flux [dev] on my laptop and use local LLMs for a variety of tasks, while also wishing that I had more RAM and more processing power, despite having a top of the line M3 max MBP.

But it is wild that two years ago running any sort of useful genAI stuff on a MBP was more-or-less a theoretical curiosity, and already today you can easily run models that would have exceeded SotA 2 years ago.

Somewhat ironically, I got into the "AI" space a complete skeptic, but thinking it would be fun to play with nonetheless. After 2 years of daily work with this models I'm starting to be increasingly convinced they are going to become increasingly disruptive. No AGI, but it will certainly reduce a lot of labor and enable things that we're really feasible before. Best of all, it's clear a lot of this work will be doable from a laptop!

tomcam4• 2 years ago

I would love to hear more about what exactly you think will be disruptive. I don’t know the LLM world very well.

dagw• 2 years ago

The only reason I'd want to upgrade my M1 Pro MBP is because I kind of need more RAM and storage. The fact that I'm even considering a new laptop just for things that before could have been a trivial upgrade is quite illuminating.

erickhill• 2 years ago

I have an MBP M1 Max and the only time I really feel like I need more oomph is when I'm doing live previews and/or rendering in After Effects. I find myself having to clear the cache constantly.

Other than that it cruises across all other applications. Hard to justify an upgrade purely for that one issue when everything else is so solid. But it does make the eyes wander...

jfoster3• 2 years ago

I expect this trend to begin reversing as we start getting AI models that are intended to run locally.

drcongo• 2 years ago

I also have an M1 Pro MBP and mostly feel the same. The most tempting thing about the new ones is the space black option. Prior to the M1, I was getting a new laptop every year or two and there was always something wrong with them - butterfly keyboard, Touch Bar etc. This thing is essentially perfect though, it still feels and performs like a brand new computer.

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

I don't think there's any sort of processor for the last 10 years. It really makes me feel like I need to upgrade.

What I do know is that Linux constantly breaks stuff. I don't even think it's treading water. These are interfaces are actively getting worse.

zitterbewegung• 2 years ago

I agree with you about not needing to upgrade but, it still stands that IMHO Apple is better off with upgrading or even having the need to upgrade with competition. (Also it's really good that Macs now have 16GB of ram by default). As I have had my M1 14.2 Max I believe that the only reason I would want to upgrade is that I can configure it with 128GB of ram which allows you to load newer AI models on device.

The MacBook Pro seems like it does have some quality of life improvements such as Thunderbolt 5, the camera is now a center stage (follows you) 14 megapixel camera now all of them have three USB-C ports and the battery life claims of 22-24 hours. Regardless if you want a MacBook Pro and you don't have one there is now an argument on not just going to buy the previous model.

7ewis• 2 years ago

I have exactly the same experience, usually after 3 years I'm desperate for new Mac but right now I genuinely think I'd prefer not to change. I have absolutely no issues with my M1 Pro, battery and performance is still great.

matthoiland• 2 years ago

I feel the same way about my M1 Macbook Air ... it's such a silly small and powerful machine. I've got money to upgrade, I just have no need. It's more than enough for even demanding Logic sessions and Ollama for most 8b models. I love it.

clairegraham• 2 years ago

Same. The upgrade from my Intel MBP to the M1 Pro 2011 was huge, but I haven't felt the need to upgrade at all.

nsxwolf• 2 years ago

My 2019 i9 flagship MBP is just so, so terrible, and my wife's M1 MacBook Air is so, so great. I can't get over how much better her computer is than mine.

jcelerier2• 2 years ago

Interesting, I have a M2 Pro Mac Mini and I hit limits literally every day

bzzzt2• 2 years ago

All hardware has limits. Which ones are you hitting every day?

tshaddox• 2 years ago

Perhaps it’s my age

I always catch myself in this same train of thought until it finally re-occurs to me that "no, the variable here is just that you're old." Part of it is that I have more money now, so I buy better products that last longer. Part of it is that I have less uninterrupted time for diving deeply into new interests which leads to always having new products on the wishlist.

In the world of personal computers, I've seen very few must-have advances in adulthood. The only two unquestionable big jumps I can think of off hand are Apple's 5K screens (how has that been ten years?!) and Apple Silicon. Other huge improvements were more gradual, like Wi-Fi, affordable SSDs, and energy efficiency. (Of course it's notable that I'm not into PC gaming, where I know there has been incredible advances in performance and display tech.)

bhouston7• 2 years ago

Does anyone have benchmarks for the M4 Pro or M4 Max CPUs yet? Would love to see Geekbench scores for those.

vishnugupta• 2 years ago

Can someone please help me out with this? I'm torn between Mac mini and and MacBook Pro, specifically the CPU spec difference.

MBP: Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine

Mac mini: Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

What kind of workload would make me regret not having bought MBP over Mac mini given the above. Thanks!

bhouston7• 2 years ago

For normal web dev, any M4 CPU is good as it is mostly dependent on single core speed. If you need to compile Unreal Engine (C++ with lots of threads), video processing or 3D rendering, more cores is important.

I think you need to pick the form factor that you need combined with the use case:

- Mobility and fast single core speeds: MacBook Air

- Mobility and multi-core: MacBook Pro with M4 Max

- Desktop with lots of cores: Mac Studio

- Desktop for single core: Mac mini

I really enjoy my MacBook Air M3 24GB for desktop + mobile use for webdev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988340

alberth3• 2 years ago

Since the only real difference is number of GPUs, it'd be:

- photo/video editing

- games, or

- AI (training / inference)

that would benefit from the extra GPUs.

mixmastamyk6• 2 years ago

^3D work - Maya, Blender, etc. Probably would be best on a Studio or workstation if/when those are available again.

ColonelPhantom• 2 years ago

The Max also has much more memory bandwidth. Especially for running local LLMs, that is the limiting factor much more than the number of GPU cores is.

subarctic• 2 years ago

Doesn't it make a bigger difference that one of them is a laptop and one of them is a mini computer that you have to leave plugged in?

TIPSIO2• 2 years ago

The keyboard touch button (top right) is objectively hideous and looks cheap. My current TouchBar may be useless but at least looks nice.

bloopernova• 2 years ago

Trying to find how many external displays the base model supports. Because corps almost always buy the base model #firstworldproblems

The base model doesn't support thunderbolt 5.

And the base model still doesn't support more than 2 external displays without the DisplaySync (not DisplayPort!) hardware+software.

fckgw6• 2 years ago

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

"M4 and M4 Pro

Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI

One external display supported at 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI"

mmcnl3• 2 years ago

Two displays with the lid open.

"The display engine of the M4 family is enhanced to support two external displays in addition to a built-in display."

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-introduces-m4-p...

iluvcommunism3• 2 years ago

I have an m3 ultra. I don’t think I need to upgrade. I also find it amusing they’re comparing the m4 to the m1 and i7 processors.

sroussey12• 2 years ago

There is no M3 Ultra.

iluvcommunism3• 2 years ago

I meant pro. My mistake. I was going to maybe upgrade it but it appears m4 isn’t much better.

roopepal• 2 years ago

I find it amusing how you answer your own "question" before asking it. Why would they target the marketing material at people who already know they aren't going to need to upgrade?

iluvcommunism3• 2 years ago

Roopepal did someone piss in your coffee this morning? I had no questions. I’m merely saying that it’s funny they’re comparing to old technology instead of last year’s. It’s a valid criticism. Take a breath.

doublebind• 2 years ago

Apple knows an M4 is a hard sell for M2/3 owners. Except if you have specific workflows that can take advantage of the newer silicon, you'll spend a lot of money on something you probably don't need. I have an M1 32GB with multiple software packages running, and I see no reason to replace this machine.

This is why Apple is comparing against M1: M1 owners are the potential buyers for this computer. (And yes, the marketing folks know the performance comparison graphs look nicer as well :)

RobinL• 2 years ago

Can anyone comment on the viability of using an external SSD rather than upgrading storage? Specifically for data analysis (e.g. storing/analysing parquet files using Python/duckdb, or video editing using divinci resolve).

Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive? Thank you!

thejazzman• 2 years ago

i go with the acasis thunderbolt enclosure and then pop in an nvme of your choice, but generic USB drives are pretty viable too ... thunderbolt can be booted from, while USB can't

i tried another brand or 2 of enclosures and they were HUGE while the acasis was credit card sized (except thickness)

rbanffy13• 2 years ago

The USB-C ports should be quite enough for that. If you are using a desktop Mac, such as an iMac, Mini, or the Studio and Pro that will be released later this week, this is a no-brainer - everything works perfectly.

rbanffy13• 2 years ago

Sorry. No Studios or Pros this turn. I’m as disappointed as everyone else.

Tepix3• 2 years ago

Run your current workload on internal storage and check how fast it is reading and writing.

For video editing - even 8K RAW - you don't need insanely fast storage. A 10GBit/s external SSD will not slow you down.

AlphaWeaver• 2 years ago

I've used a Samsung T5 SSD as my CacheClip location in Resolve and it works decently well! Resolve doesn't always tolerate disconnects very well, but when it's plugged in things are very smooth.

pier253• 2 years ago

It's totally fine.

With a TB4 case with an NVME you can get something like 2300MB/s read speeds. You can also use a USB4 case which will give you over 3000MB/s (this is what I'm doing for storing video footage for Resolve).

With a TB5 case you can go to like 6000MB/s. See this SSD by OWC:

https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-ultra

spopejoy2• 2 years ago

I'm a little sus of owc these days, their drives are way expensive, never get any third-party reviews or testing, and their warranty is horrible (3 years). I've previously swore by them so it's a little disappointing

trogdor5• 2 years ago

Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive?

I own a media production company. We use Sabrent Thunderbolt external NVMe TLC SSDs and are very happy with their price, quality, and performance.

I suggest you avoid QLC SSDs.

schainks• 2 years ago

With a thunderbolt SSD you'll think your external drive is an internal drive. I bought one of these (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGYMHS8Y) for my partner so she has snappy photo editing workflows with Adobe CC apps. Copying her 1TB photo library over took under 5 min.

joshvm• 2 years ago

Basically any good SSD manufacturer is fine, but I've found that the enclosure controller support is flaky with Sonoma. Drives that appear instantly in Linux sometimes take ages to enumerate in OSX, and only since upgrading to Sonoma. Stick with APFS if you're only using it for Mac stuff.

I have 2-4TB drives from Samsung, WD and Kingston. All work fine and are ridiculously fast. My favourite enclosure is from DockCase for the diagnostic screen.

DrBenCarson2• 2 years ago

Get something with Thunderbolt and you’ll likely never notice a difference

muro• 2 years ago

Don't bother with thunderbolt 4, go for USB 4 enclosure instead - I've got a Jeyi one. Any SSD will work, I use a Samsung 990 pro inside. It was supposed to be the fastest you can get - I get over 3000MB/s.

Here is the rabbit hole you might want to check out: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enc...

radicality3• 2 years ago

Though TB5 should be better. I think you can already find some of these on Aliexpress.

https://www.winstars.com/en_us/category/Thunderbolt_5.html

__mharrison__• 2 years ago

I edit all my video content from a USB-attached SSD with Resolve on my MBP.

My only complaint is that Apple gouges you for memory and storage upgrades. (But in reality I don't want the raw and rendered video taking up space on my machine).

spopejoy2• 2 years ago

I had a big problem with crucial 4tb ssds recently, using them as time machine drives. The first backup would succeed, the second would fail and the disk would then be unrepairable in disk utility, which also will refuse to format to non-apfs (and an apfs reformat wouldn't fix it).

Switched to samsung t9s, so far so good.

radicality3• 2 years ago

Hopefully in the next days/weeks we’ll see TB5 external enclosures and you’ll be able to hit very fast speeds with the new Macs. I would wait for those before getting another enclosure now.

Afaik the main oem producer is Winstars, though I could only find sketchy-looking Aliexpress seller so far.

https://www.winstars.com/en_us/category/Thunderbolt_5.html

dr_kiszonka• 2 years ago

"Up to 7x faster image processing in Affinity Photo"

Great to see Affinity becoming so popular that it gets acknowledged by Apple.

sunnybeetroot• 2 years ago

Affinity has been mentioned many times by Apple in their product videos

teaearlgraycold• 2 years ago

I’m a fan of their software and pricing.

Brajeshwar• 2 years ago

Affinity is now part of Canva. https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity/

smokey_the_bear• 2 years ago

I have an M2 Max now, and it's incredible. But it still can't handle running xcode's Instruments. I'd upgrade if the M4s could run the leaks tool seamlessly, but I doubt any computer could.

mattfrommars• 2 years ago

Does anyone know if there is a way to use Mac without the Apple bloatware?

I genuinely want to use it as primary machine but with this Intel MacBook Pro I have, I absolutely dislike FaceTime, IMessage, the need to use AppStore, Apple always asking me have a Apple user name password (which I don't and have zero intention), block Siri, and all telemetry stuff Apple has backed in, stop the machine calling home, etc.

This is to mirror tools available in Windows to disable and remove Microsoft bloatware and ad tracing built in.

WesolyKubeczek• 2 years ago

You can totally use it without ever signing in to Apple account. You cannot delete Siri etc, but you can disable parts of it and not use the rest.

philistine3• 2 years ago

There used to be this whole contingent of people who were adamant that Apple's software was too opinionated, bloated, that you couldn't adapt its OS to your needs, and that Apple was far too ingrained in your relationship with your device. That Linux was true freedom, but at least that Windows respected its users

Then Windows 11 came out.

alberth3• 2 years ago

Do you mean you want to use Apple Silicon without macOS?

If that's your question, yes - various options exist like https://asahilinux.org

derr1• 2 years ago

You don't need to use AppStore, unless of course you want to use apple software.

Pretty much all the software I use is from brew.

alanwreath2• 2 years ago

this ^^

philistine3• 2 years ago

You need to embrace Apple's vision, or use something else. Clearly your goals and Apple's are misaligned, so you will only feel pain when using a Mac.

Get a PC.

alanwreath2• 2 years ago

IIRC Apple is a lot less heavy handed wrt service login requirements when compared to Microsoft’s most recent Windows endeavors. And depending on the developer you can get around having to use the App Store at all. Being you’re on an Intel Mac have you considered just using Linux ?

mixmastamyk6• 2 years ago

I gave up on macos when they started making the OS partition read-only. A good security feature in general, but their implementation meant that changing anything became a big set of difficulties and trade-offs.

That, combined with the icloud and telemetry BS, I'd had enough.

astrange13• 2 years ago

Not only good security, but it also makes software updates a lot faster because you don't have to check if the user has randomly changed any system files before patching them.

dvno42• 2 years ago

You can use OSX without an Apple account and paired with a 3rd party host based firewall (Little Snitch), the OS usually stays out of your way (imo). Bundled apps can be removed after disabling SIP (file integrity) but there are downsides/maintenance to that route.

sliken14• 2 years ago

At a linux conference I saw many macbooks. Talked to a few, they just ran linux in a VM full screen for programming and related. Then used OSX for everything else (office, outlook, teams, work enforced apps, etc). They seemed very happy and this encouraged them to not task switch as often.

wpm4• 2 years ago

There is zero iCloud account requirement. You do not need to use the App Store. Gatekeeper can be disabled with a configuration profile key. Telemetry (what little there is) can be disabled with a configuration profile key. Siri can be disabled, all of the generative AI crap can be disabled, yadda yadda yadda, with a configuration profile key. Every background service can be listed and disabled if you disable authenticated-root. Hell, you could disable `apsd` and disable all push notifications too, which require a phone home to Apple.

sroussey12• 2 years ago

No WiFi 7!

unsupp0rted2• 2 years ago

I have a 16" M1 Pro with 16 gigs of ram, and it regularly struggles under the "load" of Firebase emulator.

You can tell not because the system temp rises, but because suddenly Spotify audio begins to pop, constantly and irregularly.

It took me a year to figure out that the system audio popping wasn't hardware and indeed wasn't software, except in the sense that memory (or CPU?) pressure seems to be the culprit.

maxioatic2• 2 years ago

I have a 14" M1 Max with 32gb of ram for work, and it does that popping noise every once it a while too! I've always wondered what was causing it.

SSLy2• 2 years ago

Im relatively surprised modern Macs have same buffer underrun issue I had on intel laptops with pulseaudio 7+ years back.

silvr• 2 years ago

Whoa! I've been so annoyed by this for years, so interesting that you figured it out. It's the kind of inelegance in design that would have had Steve Jobs yelling at everyone to fix, just ruins immersion in music and had no obvious way to fix.

astrange13• 2 years ago

That sounds like an app issue, it might be doing non-realtime-safe operations on a realtime thread. But generally speaking, if you have an issue, use feedback assistant.

zaptrem4• 2 years ago

This happens whenever I load up one of our PyTorch models on my M1 MBP 16gb too. I also hate the part where if the model (or any other set of programs) uses too much RAM the whole system will sometimes straight up hang and then crash due to kernel watchdog timeout instead of just killing the offender.

astrange13• 2 years ago

There is an API `proc_setpcontrol` which absolutely noone uses which does the thing you want.

It definitely gets unstable in those situations, but you probably don't want your scripts randomly OOM killed either.

duped• 2 years ago

This kind of sounds like someone is abusing perf cores and high priority threading in your stack. iirc, on MacOS audio workgroup threads are supposed to be scheduled with the highest (real time) priority on p cores, which shouldn't have issues under load, unless someone else is trying to compete at the same priority.

unsupp0rted2• 2 years ago

There is some discussion online on whether this happens when you have a Rosetta app running in the background somewhere (say a util you got via Homebrew, for example).

Even when I remove all "Intel" type apps in activity monitor, I still experience the issue though.

FuckButtons• 2 years ago

I’ve had something similar happen as a bug when I was using a python sound device and calling numpy functions inside its stream callback. Took me a long time to figure out that numpy subroutines that drop the GIL would cause the audio stream to stall.

pier253• 2 years ago

I hear popping when Chrome opens a big image or something similar. I always assumed it was a Chrome issue.

twalla• 2 years ago

They're really burying the lede here - magic trackpad and magic keyboard finally have USB-C :)

DerekL• 2 years ago

That was announced on Monday, with the new iMacs.

AdamJacobMuller8• 2 years ago

That's annoying. I really want to fully remove lightning connectors from my life, but, my existing magic* devices work fine and will probably work fine for another decade or two.

aquir• 2 years ago

Would it make sense to upgrade from M2 Pro 16 to M4 Pro 16? (both base models) I mean it terms of numbers, more cores, more RAM but everything else is pretty much the same. I am looking forward to see some benchmarks!

umanwizard11• 2 years ago

Completely depends on what your workflow is.

sliken14• 2 years ago

No.

gigatexal2• 2 years ago

Lolz the M4 max doesn’t get anything more than 128GB ram in the MacBook? Weird

gigatexal2• 2 years ago

Cuz of this: was expecting 256GB https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971726#41972721

mrcwinn• 2 years ago

Question without judgement: why would I want to run LLM locally? Say I'm building a SaaS app and connecting to Anthropic using the `ai` package. Would I want to cut over to ollama+something for local dev?

andrewmunsell• 2 years ago

Data privacy-- some stuff, like all my personal notes I use with a RAG system, just don't need to be sent to some cloud provider to be data mined and/or have AI trained on them

gonesurfing• 2 years ago

I’ve been thinking about the local notes use case, but know zero about doing it. Do you have a good setup you could point me at?

jwitthuhn• 2 years ago

For me it is consistency. I control the model and the software so I know a local LLM will remain exactly the same until I want to change it.

It also avoids the trouble of using a hosted LLM that decides to double their price overnight, costs are very predictable.

satvikpendem5• 2 years ago

Lack of censorship.

thesurlydev2• 2 years ago

My wallet is trembling.

On a side note, anyone know what database software was shown during the announcement?

duckmysick• 2 years ago

What's the timestamp? At 3:43 there's Luna Modeler.

https://www.datensen.com/data-modeling/luna-modeler-for-rela...

thesurlydev2• 2 years ago

Thanks. That's it. Coincidentally, I found out what it was by looking at the actual press release where they had a screenshot of it too.

alexnewman• 2 years ago

I recently switched back to using homemade desktops for most of my work. I’ve been running Debian on them . Still have my Mac laptop for working on the go

wkyleg• 2 years ago

What's the consensus regarding best MacBooks for AI/ML?

I've heard it's easier to just use cloud options, but I sill like the idea of being able to run actual models and train them on my laptop.

I have a M1 MacBook now and I'm considering trading in to upgrade.

I've seen somewhat conflicting things regarding what you get for the money. For instance, some reports recommending a M2 Pro for the money IIRC.

ZeroCool2u• 2 years ago

Training is not practical. For inference they're pretty great though, especially if you go up in the specs and add a bunch of memory.

the_king5• 2 years ago

To run LLMs locally (Ollama/LLM Notebook), you want as much memory as you can afford. For actually training toy models yourself for learning/experiments in my experience it doesn't matter much. PyTorch is flexible.

gjvc• 2 years ago

As a proud user of an ARM3 in 1992, I'm pleased to be able to see and say that ARM won in the end.

astrange13• 2 years ago

ARMv8 is not much like previous ARMs. But it has won - Intel's latest x86 extension basically turns it into ARMv8.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...

rowanG077• 2 years ago

I couldn't disagree more, the defining difference between ARMv8 and x86 is the memory model.

daveisfera• 2 years ago

Once they get a MacBook Air with an M4, it will become a viable option for developers and other users that want/need 2 external monitors. Definitely looking forward to that happening.

uriah• 2 years ago

The M3 Air does support 2 but only with the lid closed

brailsafe7• 2 years ago

The base M4 Max only has an option for 36gb of ram!? They're doing some sus things with that pricing ladder again. No more 96gb option, and then to go beyond 48gb I'd have to spend another $1250 CAD on a processor upgrade first, and in doing so lose the option to have the now baseline 512gb ssd

brailsafe7• 2 years ago

I'd add that although I find it a bit dirty, the computers are obviously still amazing. It's just a bit bizarre that the lower spec cpu offers the customer the option to change the ram quantity. More specifically, going from the M4 Pro to the M4 Max removes the option to change the ram from 36gb, whereas sticking with the Pro lets you select 48gb or 24gb, unless you choose the max Max. If I pre-order the Mac Mini with the same processor, I can select 64gb for the insane price of an additional $750cad, but it's just not available on the macbook pro M4 Pro.

It would indeed have been nice to see a faster response rate screen, even though I value picture quality more, and it also would have been nice to see even vaguely different colors like the iMac supposedly got, but it seems like a nice spec bump year anyway.

_wire_• 2 years ago

I think any idea that Apple doesn't thoroughly understand the capacity, value, market, price tradeoff is untenable.

The most obvious view is that Apple price gouges on storage. But this seems too simplistic.

My conjecture is that there's an inescapable tension between supply (availabilty/cost) sales forecasts, technological churn, and roadmaps that leads them to want to somewhat subsidize the lowest end, and place a bit of back-pressure on consumption at the high-end. The trick is finding the tipping point on the curve between growth and over commitment by suppliers. Especially, for tightly vertically integrated products.

The PC industry is more diffuse and horizontal and so more tolerant of fluctuations in supply and demand across a broader network of providers and consumers, leading to a lower, more even cost structure for components and modules.

In real terms, Apple's products keep costing less, just like all computer products. They seem to make a point of holding prices on an appearance point of latest tech that's held steady since the first Macs: about $2500 for a unit that meets the expectations of space right behind the bleeding edge while being reliable, useful and a vanguard of trends.

lenerdenator• 2 years ago

I'm just some dude, looking at a press release, wondering when Tim Apple is gonna be a cool dude and release the MBP in all of the colors that they make the iMac in.

APPARENTLY NOT TODAY.

C'mon mannnnn. The 90s/y2k are back in! People want the colorful consumer electronics! It doesn't have to be translucent plastic like it was back then but give us at least something that doesn't make me wonder if I live in the novel The Giver every time I walk into a meetup filled with MacBook Pros.

I'm sure the specs are great.

magarnicle2• 2 years ago

In Apple world black means pro. That's why they give you black stickers with pro models and white for everything else.

hartator3• 2 years ago

I’m really excited about the nano-texture display option.

It’s essentially a matte coating, but the execution on iPad displays is excellent. While it doesn’t match the e-ink experience of devices like the Kindle or ReMarkable, it’s about 20-30% easier on the eyes. The texture feels also great (even though it’s less relevant for a laptop), and the glare reduction is a welcome feature.

I prefer working on the MacBook screen, but I nearly bought an Apple Studio Display XDR or an iPad as a secondary screen just for that nano-texture finish. It's super good news that this is coming to the MacBook Pro.

cedws• 2 years ago

Does it make much difference for looking at code?

hartator3• 2 years ago

Yes, the main goal is to be easier on the eyes IMO.

It's easier to read on it.

dkarbayev• 2 years ago

Do you actually have to wipe the screen with the included special cloth? The screen on all of the macbooks that I've had usually get oily patches because of the contact with keycaps, so I have to wipe the screen regularly.

hartator3• 2 years ago

I wipe all my devices with regular paper towels with a tad of water. Including my $5k Apple XDR display.

I am probably not the best example to emulate lol.

kvczor• 2 years ago

How is the contrast? The HDR content? Any downsides?

I will upgrade to M4 Pro and really hate the glare when I travel (and I do that a lot) but at the same time I don't want to lose any quality that the MBP delivers which is quite excellent imho

wcski• 2 years ago

but does it have touch screen -_-

zaptrem4• 2 years ago

I used a Surface Pro for 6 years and and haven’t missed the touch screen once since switching back to MBP 3 years ago. I would have missed the handwriting input but that’s what a low end iPad is for.

e63f67dd-065b• 2 years ago

MacBook Air with M2 and M3 comes standard with 16GB of unified memory, and is available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, starting at $999 (U.S.) and $899 (U.S.) for education.

At long last, I can safely recommend the base model macbook air to my friends and family again. At $1000 ($900 with edu pricing on the m2 model) it really is an amazing package overall.

daco• 2 years ago

Upgraded to a M1 Pro 14 in December 2021, and I still rock it everyday for dev purpose. Apple does great laptop.

The only downsides is that I see a kind of "burnt?" transparent spot on my screen. When connecting to an HDMI cable, the sound does not ouput properly to the TV screen, and makes the video I plat laggy. Wondering if I go to the Apple Store, would fix it?

david_allison2• 2 years ago

If you're still under AppleCare+, definitely give it a try before it expires.

Personal anecdote: don't get your hopes up. I've had my issues rejected as 'no fault found', but it's definitely worth spending a bit of time on.

alexashka2• 2 years ago

The software stack has gotten so bad that no amount of hardware can make up for it.

The compile times for Swift, the gigabytes of RAM everything seems to eat up.

I closed all my apps and I'm at 10gb of RAM being used - I have nothing open.

Does this mean the Macbook Air 8gb model I had 10 years ago would basically be unable to just run the operating system alone?

It's disconcerting. Ozempic for terrible food and car-centric infrastructure we've created, cloud super-computing and 'AI' for coping with this frankenstein software stack.

The year of the Linux desktop is just around the corner to save the day, right? Right? :)

carstenhag2• 2 years ago

Memory doesn't need to be freed until a different software needs it.

alexashka2• 2 years ago

I'm referring to what Activity Monitor app tells me in its memory tab - not the underlying malloc/whatever implementation being used.

It tells me my computer is using 8gb of RAM after a restart and I haven't begun to open or close anything.

Yikes?

zja• 2 years ago

MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

This is nice, and long overdue.

cebert• 2 years ago

I wish Apple would let me max out the RAM on a lower performance chip. That’s more valuable to me than more compute.

dcchambers3• 2 years ago

I think it's just one of the tradeoffs of having everything on one SOC. They can only realistically and efficiently make so many versions.

lightoverhead• 2 years ago

The machine is great! How is its performance for AI model training? A lot of library and tools are not built for M series chip

treprinum2• 2 years ago

Poor. My M3 Max/128GB is about 20x slower than 4090. For inference it's much better, still much slower than 4090 but it enables working with much larger LLMs albeit at ~10t/s (in comparison, Threadripper 2990WX/256GB does like 0.25t/s). M4 Max is likely going to be ~25% faster than M3 Max based on CPU perf and memory bandwidth.

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 2 years ago

That ad reveal at the end. Someone in the marketing team must have started doing CrossFit

Vayu• 2 years ago

As it goes for the section where they demoed the assistance from apple intelligence to the researcher creating an abstract and adding pictures to their paper. Is it better or worse to do this? People are already complaining so heavily about dead internet theory with the 'AI voice' being so prominent..

philodeon• 2 years ago

To sum up the HN wisdom on Apple Silicon Macs:

Before the M4 models: omg, Apple only gives you 8GB RAM in the base model? Garbage!

After the M4 models: the previous laptops were so good, why would you upgrade?

hbn• 2 years ago

We'll be sure to run our future comments by you to make sure no one contradicts anyone else.

pw6hv• 2 years ago

Just replaced for the first time battery on my Macbook Pro 2015 Retina. Feel so good using such an old piece of hardware.

zubiaur• 2 years ago

I love mine, it has a fresh battery OEM battery as well. Runs the latest OS with OpenCore Legacy. But it's starting to get a bit annoying. Usable, but it is starting to feel slowish, the fan kicks up frequently.

I might still keep it another year or so, which is a testament to how good it is and how relative little progress has happened in almost 10 years.

talldayo9• 2 years ago

If it's got a full function row, it will probably work just fine under Linux. My 2014 MBP chugged pretty hard with OpenCore but handles modern Linux distros much better.

a2l3aQ• 2 years ago

If I still had my 2015 I would have applied some liquid metal TIM by now, I did a paste refresh and that worked very well to get the fan under control.

swiftuser• 2 years ago

Did you disassemble the fan assembly? And applied new thermal paste?

I'm not using mine any more, but I noticed a big difference when I replaced the battery and got all the dust out this spring. Also installed a new battery. Still quite a hard sell on the used market :)

switch0072• 2 years ago

Which MacOS version? I upgraded to a newer one and it crawled to a halt, it's unusable now. UI is insanely laggy. It's sitting in a drawer gathering dust now

ilzmastr• 2 years ago

How long is your battery life? I've replaced the battery 2 times in my MBP 2015 (iFixit battery) but battery life is only 2.5 hours and I'm perplexed.

mattegan• 2 years ago

It pains me deeply that they used Autodesk Fusion in one of the app screenshots. It is by far the worst piece of software I use on Mac OS.

Wish the nano-texture display was available when I upgraded last year. The last MacBook I personally bought was in 2012 when the first retina MBP had just released. I opted for the "thick" 15" high-res matte option. Those were the days...

spiderice3• 2 years ago

Wait really? I love Fusion 360. I suppose I use it on Windows though. Is it significantly worse on Mac?

wpm4• 2 years ago

Oh its awful on the Mac.

flkiwi5• 2 years ago

The weird thing about these Apple product videos in the last few years is that there are all these beautiful shots of Apple's campus with nobody there other than the presenter. It's a beautiful stage for these videos, but it's eerie and disconcerting, particularly given Apple's RTO approach.

davidczech3• 2 years ago

I think it’s usually filmed on weekends

monocasa2• 2 years ago

You would just think that with a brand so intrinsically wrapped around the concept of technology working for and with the people that use it, you'd want to show the people who made it if you're going to show the apple campus at all.

It kind of just comes off as one of those YouTube liminal space horror videos when it's that empty.

reaperducer4• 2 years ago

I used to think the videos with all of the drone fly-bys was cool. But in the last year or so, I've started to feel the same as you. Where are all the people? It's starting to look like Apple spent a billion dollars building a technology ghost town.

Surely the entire staff can't be out rock climbing, surfing, eating at trendy Asian-inspired restaurants at twilight, and having catered children's birthday parties in immaculately manicured parks.

astrange13• 2 years ago

The neighboring city charges $100k per newly constructed unit for park maintenance fees. So there actually are a lot of nice parks.

https://x.com/maxdubler/status/1778841932141408432

flkiwi5• 2 years ago

Oh I think they're very well done and very pretty! But lately this discomfort has started to creep in, as you note. Like something you'd see in a WALL-E spinoff: everyone has left the planet already but Buy n Large is still putting out these glorious promo videos using stock footage. Or, like, post-AI apocalypse, all the humans are confined to storage bins, but the proto-AI marketing programs are still churning out content.

hoherd• 2 years ago

I interviewed there in 2017 and honestly even back then the interior of their campus was kind of creepy in some places. The conference rooms had this flat, bland beige that reminded me of exactly the kind of computers the G3 era was trying to get away from, but the size of a room, and you were inside it.

saagarjha8• 2 years ago

The Mac mini video from yesterday has employees: https://www.apple.com/105/media/us/mac-mini/2024/58e5921e-f4...

flkiwi5• 2 years ago

That by itself raises an interesting editorial question. Apple (like most big companies) doesn't do things randomly re: high impact public communications like this. I'm curious what made the Mac mini a product that merited showing people doing things, with a computer that is tied to one location, vs. a Macbook Pro's comparative emptiness, for a computer that can go anywhere and be with anyone. It could be as simple as fun vs focus.

brailsafe7• 2 years ago

Incidentally, when I passed through the hellscape that is Cupertino/San Jose a few years, I was a little shocked that as a visitor you can't even see the campus; it's literally a walled garden. I guess when I was initially curious about the campus design during its build, I assumed that even a single part, maybe the orchard, would be accessible to the public. I guess based on the surrounding urban development though, the city isn't exactly interested in being livable.

xyst• 2 years ago

… advanced 12MP … camera

wot, m8? Only Apple will call a 12 megapixel camera “advanced”. Same MPs as an old iPhone 6 rear camera.

Aside from that, it’s pretty much the same as the prior generation. Same thickness in form factor. Slightly better SoC. Only worth it if you jump from M1 (or any Intel mbp) to M4.

Would be godlike if Apple could make the chip swappable. Buy a Mac Studio M2 Ultra Max Plus. Then just upgrade SoC on an as needed basis.

Would probably meet their carbon neutral/negative goals much faster. Reduce e-waste. Unfortunately this is an American company and got to turn profit. Profit over environment and consumer interests.

hypercube33• 2 years ago

I feel like if they pushed Win32/Gaming on Apple Mx hardware it'd give at least a single reason for people to adopt or upgrade their devices to new models. I know for sure I'd be on board if everything that ran on my steam deck ran on a mac game wise, since that's holding me back from dropping the cash. I still think I'll get a mini though.

optymizer• 2 years ago

My only explanations for the lack of gaming support (see historical lack of proper OpenGL support) while still supporting high end graphics use cases (film editing, CAD, visual effects) are:

1) Either Apple wants to maintain the image of the Macbook as a "serious device", and not associate itself with the likes of "WoW players in their mom's basement".

2) Microsoft worked something out with Apple, where Apple would not step significantly on the gaming market (Windows, Xbox). I can't think of another reason why gaming on iOS would be just fine, but abysmal on MacOS. Developers release games on MacOS _despite_ the platform.

pradn• 2 years ago

Valve is trying to obsolete Windows, so they can prevent Microsoft from interfering with Steam. Apple could team up with them, and help obsolete Windows for a very large percentage of game-hours.

There will always be a long tail of niche Windows games (retro + indie especially). But you can capture the Fortnite (evergreen) / Dragon Age (new AAA) audience.

rimliu• 2 years ago

Not pixel count determines whether camera is advanced or not.

matja• 2 years ago

Especially because pixel count is a meaningless metric by itself. 12MP is the same as a Nikon D3, which if it could replicate the results of I would be happy with!

a_vanderbilt2• 2 years ago

Absolutely, I have a 1080p Logitech webcam that gives worse quality in anything other than perfect lighting, whereas my 720p Intel Mac Air webcam gives grainer (but at least usable) quality in most conditions. Sensor quality and software have to be good too or it's just a spec pissing contest.

mrtksn• 2 years ago

Megapixels is nothing more than the number of sample points. There's so much more to image quality than the number of samples.

I blame the confusion to PC&Android marketing people who were pushing for years and years the idea that the higher the megapixel digits the better the camera is. Non-Apple customers should be really pissed of for the years of misinformation and indoctrination on false KPI.

The marketing gimmicks pushed generations of devices to optimize for meaningless numbers. At times, even Apple was forced to adopt those. Such a shame.

hammock2• 2 years ago

The Thinkpad webcam is only 5MP. Many other PCs have much less.

dagmx2• 2 years ago

You’re comparing cameras against different product segments.

Laptop cameras are significantly smaller in all dimensions than phone cameras. Most laptop cameras are 1-4MP. Most are 720p (1MP), and a few are 1080p (2MP). The previous MacBook was 1080p

For reference, a 4k image is 8MP.

12MP is absolutely a massive resolution bump, and I’d challenge you to find a competitive alternate in a laptop.

xcv1232• 2 years ago

More megapixels on a tiny sensor does not make it more advanced. At a certain point it only makes it worse. That doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the image. There is way more to digital cameras than pixel count.

hit8run• 2 years ago

Best time to buy a frame.work Linux Laptop without fomo. I’m done with Apple.

resters3• 2 years ago

It's hard to imagine ay reason why I would not want to keep upgrading to a new MPB every few years -- my M3 MBP is by far the best laptop I've owned thanks to the incredible battery life.

Of course I'm rooting for competition, but Apple seems to be establishing a bigger and bigger lead with each iteration.

spease• 2 years ago

I don’t see the yearly releases as saying you have to upgrade. Rather, having a consistent cadence makes it easier for the supply chain, and the short iteration time means there’s less pressure to rush something in half-baked or delay a release.

resters3• 2 years ago

I agree. my comment was not meant to suggest that I believe otherwise.

telesilla• 2 years ago

My M1 laptop from early 2022 is too good for me to care about upgrading right now, I loaded it up with 64GB ram and it's still blazing. What benefit would I really notice? My heavy apps loading a couple of seconds faster?

resters3• 2 years ago

I agree. I also have an M1 mini with 8GB of RAM and while I wish I'd bought one with more RAM, it work nicely when the task doesn't require much RAM. The incremental benefits of the M2-M4 are nice, but they do not obsolete the M1 by any stretch of the imagination.

nwhnwh2• 2 years ago

The notch makes me sad.

mixmastamyk6• 2 years ago

It's really two extra flaps. Feel better now?

Aaron2222• 2 years ago

You can just turn it off. macOS lets you change the resolution to use just the screen below the notch, and because it's mini-LED, the now unused "flaps" to the sides of the notch are indistinguishable from the rest of the bezel.

henry2023• 2 years ago

The real question is. Can I plug two monitors to it?

michelb• 2 years ago

You can. And use your laptop screen as the third one.

matrix872• 2 years ago

starting with 16GB of memory

yeah it's about time

emahhh• 2 years ago

I'm fighting the urge to get the M4 Pro model so bad right now.

_7acn• 2 years ago

No OLED yet :(

nitsky• 2 years ago

I'm waiting for OLED. Will purchase as soon as they do it.

lukev11• 2 years ago

I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering. They didn't roll out _any_ AI features until they were capable of running them locally, and before doing any cloud-based AI they designed and rolled out Private Cloud Compute.

You can argue about whether it's actually bulletproof or not but the fact is, nobody else is even trying, and have lost sight of all privacy-focused features in their rush to ship anything and everything on my device to OpenAI or Gemini.

I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.

paulryanrogers• 2 years ago

to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me

How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades? MacOS also tightens the screws on what you can run and from where, or at least require more hoop jumping over time.

arzke• 2 years ago

How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades?

Not sure what you mean exactly by this, but to me their Self Service Repair program is a step in the right direction.

superb_dev2• 2 years ago

Apple also left a very convenient hole in their boot loader to allow running another OS. Linux works pretty well these days

lukev11• 2 years ago

Of course I wish the hardware were somehow more open, but to a large extent, it's directly because of hardware based privacy features.

If you allowed third-party components without restraint, there'd be no way to prevent someone swapping out a component.

Lock-in and planned obsolescence are also factors, and ones I'm glad the EU (and others) are pushing back here. But it isn't as if there are no legitimate tradeoffs.

Regarding screw tightening... if they ever completely remove the ability to run untrusted code, yes, then I'll admit I was wrong. But I am more than happy to have devices be locked down by default. My life has gotten much easier since I got my elderly parents and non-technical siblings to move completely to the Apple ecosystem. That's the tradeoff here.

jeffybefffy519• 2 years ago

Considering you need an Apple ID to log into the hardware, id argue Apple gatekeeps that ownership pretty tightly.

syndicatedjelly• 2 years ago

MacOS also tightens the screws on what you can run and from where, or at least require more hoop jumping over time.

Can you explain what you mean by this? I have been doing software development on MacOS for the last couple of years and have found it incredibly easy to run anything I want on my computer from the terminal, whenever I want. Maybe I'm not the average user, but I use mostly open-source Unix tooling and have never had a problem with permissions or restrictions.

Are you talking about packaged applications that are made available on the App Store? If so, sure have rules to make sure the store is high-quality, kinda like how Costco doesn't let anyone just put garbage on their shelves

reaperducer4• 2 years ago

How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades?

I can neither repair nor upgrade my electric car, my furniture, or my plumbing. But they all still belong to me.

ezfe3• 2 years ago

You can buy most parts officially from Apple - I just bought a new set of keycaps to replace some on my MacBook Air. Couldn't do that 5 years ago.

You can install whatever OS you want on your computer - Asahi Linux is the only one that's done the work to support that.

You can disable the system lockdowns that "tighten the screws" you refer to and unlock most things back to how they used to be.

rad_gruchalski• 2 years ago

What you see hostile to repair I see as not worth stealing. What you see as macOS dictating what you can run from where I see as an infiltration prevention.

sroussey12• 2 years ago

I have the same problem with graphics cards (not upgradable—and cost more than the pc they are in!)

Same with server parts using HBM—won’t let me upgrade memory there either.

That said, the apple ssd situation is abysmal. At least with memory they have reasons.

danielfoster• 2 years ago

You can read the ifixit teardown before you buy it.

FractalHQ• 2 years ago

My MacBooks are built like a tank and outperform/outlive everything else easily for a decade. I don’t need more than 128GB of RAM or 2TB of storage… and I don’t need to repair what doesn’t break. It would be nice to have the option, but the time I save using an OS that just works like MacOS is worth more to me. And the best software in the world always runs on it. It’s a no brainier for me.

victor106• 2 years ago

I agree 100% with this.

Amongst all the big tech companies Apple is the closest you will get to if you want Privacy.

riazrizvi• 2 years ago

The approach that the big platforms have to producing their own versions of very successful apps cannibalizes their partners. This focus on consumer privacy by Apple is the company's killer competitive advantage in this particular area, IMO. If I felt they were mining me for my private business data I'd switch to Linux in heartbeat. This is what keeps me off Adobe, Microsoft Office, Google's app suite, and apps like Notion as much as possible.

dmz73• 2 years ago

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does not actually exist, sure they may not share that data with other parties but they definitely do not respect your privacy or act like you own the hardware you purchased. Apple marketing seems to have reached the level indoctrination where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.

leokennis2• 2 years ago

At the very least Apple are better than Microsoft, Windows and the vendors that sell Windows laptops when it comes to respecting user experience and privacy.

lukev11• 2 years ago

I mean, the security features are pretty well documented. The FBI can't crack a modern iPhone even with Apple's help. A lot of the lockdowns are in service of that.

I'm curious: what hardware and software stack do you use?

hilux4• 2 years ago

If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware.

I happen to be in the midst of a repair with Apple right now. And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone. Aside from the occasional sticker, I don't have any custom hardware mods to my phone or laptop, and nor do 99.99% of people.

Can Apple please every single tech nerd 100% of the time? No. Those people should stick to Linux, so that they can have a terrible usability experience ALL the time, but feel more "in control," or something.

wslh3• 2 years ago

Even if I have analytics disabled?

Genuinely asking: are there any specifics on this? I understand that blocking at the firewall level is an option, but I recall someone here mentioning an issue where certain local machine rules don’t work effectively. I believe this is the issue [1]. Has it been “fixed”?

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/14/apple-drops-exclu...

robenkleene• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store

I don't think Apple's behavior actually reflects this if you look closely (although I can certainly see how someone could form that opinion):

As a counter example, Apple assisted with their own engineers to help port Blender to Metal (https://code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-met...):

Around one year ago, after joining the Blender Development Fund and seeding hardware to Blender developers, Apple empowered a few of its developers to directly contribute to the Blender source code.

I'm assuming similar support goes to other key pieces of software, e.g., from Adobe, Maxon, etc... but they don't talk about it for obvious reasons.

The point being Apple considers these key applications to their ecosystem, and (in my estimation at least) these are applications that will probably never be included in the App Store. (The counterargument would be the Office Suite, which is in the App Store, but the key Office application, Excel, is a totally different beast than the flagship Windows version, that kind of split isn't possible with the Adobe suite for example.)

Now what I actually think is happening is the following:

1. Apple believes the architecture around security and process management that they developed for iOS is fundamentally superior to the architecture of the Mac. This is debatable, but personally I think it's true as well for every reason, except for what I'll go into in #2 below. E.g., a device like the Vision Pro would be impossible with macOS architecture (too much absolute total complete utter trash is allowed to run unfettered on a Mac for a size-constrained device like that to ever be practical, e.g., all that trash consumes too much battery).

2. The open computing model has been instrumental in driving computing forward. E.g., going back to the Adobe example, After Effects plugins are just dynamically linked right into the After Effects executable. Third party plugins for other categories often work similarly, e.g., check out this absolutely wild video on how you install X-Particles on Cinema 4D (https://insydium.ltd/support-home/manuals/x-particles-video-...).

I'm not sure if anyone on the planet even knows why, deep down, #2 is important, I've never seen anyone write about it. But all the boundary pushing computing fields I'm interested in, which is mainly around media creation (i.e., historically Apple's bread-and-butter), seems to depend on it (notably they are all also local first, i.e., can't really be handled by a cloud service that opens up other architecture options).

So the way I view it is that Apple would love to move macOS to the fundamentally superior architecture model from iOS, but it's just impossible to do so without hindering too many use cases that depend on that open architecture. Apple is willing to go as close to that line as they can (in making the uses cases more difficult, e.g., the X-Particles video above), but not actually willing to cross it.

GeekyBear5• 2 years ago

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application

Consulting a certificate revocation list is a standard security feature, not a privacy issue.

sgarland• 2 years ago

With the sheer number of devs who use Macs, there is a 0% chance they’re going to outright prevent running arbitrary executables. Warn / make difficult, sure, but prevent? No.

abrookewood3• 2 years ago

Their repair policy, from what I can see, is a thinly veiled attempt to get you to either pay for Apple Care or to upgrade. I got a quote to repair a colleague's MacBook Pro, less than 2 years old, which has apparent 'water damage' and which they want AUD $2,500 to repair! Of course that makes no sense, so we're buying a new one ...

traceroute666• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store

I'm very happy to only run stuff approved on Apple's app store... ESPECIALLY following their introduction of privacy labels for all apps so you know what shit the developer will try to collect from you without wasting your time downloading it.

Also have you seen the amount of dodgy shit on the more open app stores ?

Razengan• 2 years ago

where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.

You are free to verify.

idontwantthis• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store,

What are you talking about? I don’t run a single app from the app store and have never felt a need to.

kcplate6• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store

I am totally ok with this. I have personally seen apple reject an app update and delist the app because a tiny library used within it had a recent security concerns. Forced the company to fix it.

spacedcowboy5• 2 years ago

They send a hash of the binaries/libraries, and generate a cache locally so it's not sent again. That helps stop you from running tampered-with binaries and frameworks. No user-personal data is sent.

There is no evidence at all that they are trying to ensure you can only run things from the App Store - I run a whole bunch of non-app-store binaries every single day. To make that claim is baseless and makes me de-rate the rest of what you write.

There is always a trade-off between privacy and security. This still falls well under the Google/Android/Chrome level, or indeed the Microsoft/Windows level with its targeted ads, IMHO.

Choose your poison, but this works for me.

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

not share that data with other parties but they definitely do not respect your privacy

not sharing my data with other parties, or using it to sell me stuff or show me ads, is what I would define as respecting my privacy; Apple checks those boxes where few other tech companies do

nox101• 2 years ago

Agree. I recently went to an Apple store in Tokyo to buy an accessory. The Apple employee pulled up their store iPhone to take my payment (apple pay) and then asked me to fill out a form with my email address and there was a message about how my info would be shared with some company. I thought about going back and pretending to buy something else so I could film it. I questioned the store person, "It's apple supposed to be "Privacy first"". If it was privacy first they wouldn't have asked for the info in the first place and they certainly wouldn't be sharing it with a 3rd party.

robertlagrant• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU

What has the EU done to stop Apple doing this? Are Apple currently rolling it out to everywhere but the EU?

d_theorist• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU.

People have been saying this ever since Apple added the App Store to the Mac in 2010. It’s been 14 years. I wonder how much time has to go by for people to believe it’s not on Apple’s todo list.

lynx23• 2 years ago

The EU is center-right-wing, and laughs all the way to the bank whenever someone like you falls for their "we externally pretend to be the good guys" trope. Leyen is pretty much the worst leadership ever, but they still manage to convince the politically naiv that everything is fine, because of GDPR, AI laws and huge penalties for big tech. Its sad how simple it is to confuse people.

randomcarbloke• 2 years ago

Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store

that ship has well and truly sailed, this conspiracy might once have held water but Apple's machines are far too commercially ubiquitous for them to have any designs on ringfencing all the software used by all the industries that have taken a liking to the hardware.

kranke155• 2 years ago

You’re way off base. Paranoid.

wslh3• 2 years ago

I understand we will be able to disable that just in case? I don't want a Microsoft Windows telemetry dejavu.

amelius5• 2 years ago

Private Cloud Compute

That's such a security theater. As long as nobody can look inside their ICs, nobody knows what's really happening there.

ants_everywhere• 2 years ago

They've certainly engaged in a lot of privacy theater before. For example

Apple oversells its differential privacy protections. "Apple’s privacy loss parameters exceed the levels typically considered acceptable by the differential privacy research community," says USC professor Aleksandra Korolova, a former Google research scientist who worked on Google's own implementation of differential privacy until 2014. She says the dialing down of Apple's privacy protections in iOS in particular represents an "immense increase in risk" compared to the uses most researchers in the field would recommend.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-differential-privacy-short...

lukev11• 2 years ago

That's a fine bit of goalpost shifting. They state that they will make their _entire software stack_ for Private Cloud Compute public for research purposes.

Assuming they go through with that, this alone puts them leagues ahead of any other cloud service.

It also means that to mine your data the way everyone else does, they would need to deliberately insert _hardware_ backdoors into their own systems, which seems a bit too difficult to keep secret and a bit too damning a scandal should it be discovered...

Occam's razor here is that they're genuinely trying to use real security as a competitive differentiator.

davidczech3• 2 years ago

That could be said of any device you own, ever.

IOT_Apprentice• 2 years ago

Actually Apple has stated they are allowing security researchers to look at their infrastructure DIRECTLY.

kalleboo4• 2 years ago

Does that mean you just don't bother encrypting any of your data, and just use unencrypted protocols? Since you can't inspect the ICs that are doing the work, encryption must all also be security theater.

theshrike795• 2 years ago

Oh? https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/25/apple_private_cloud_c...

"Today we’re making these resources publicly available to invite all security and privacy researchers – or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity – to learn more about PCC and perform their own independent verification of our claims."

https://security.apple.com/documentation/private-cloud-compu...

There are also a million dollars of bounties to be had if you hack it

doctorpangloss7• 2 years ago

Privacy is the new obscenity. What does privacy even mean to you concretely? Answer the question with no additional drama, and I guarantee you either Apple doesn’t deliver what you are asking for, or you are using services from another company, like Google, in a way that the actions speak that you don’t really care about what you are asking for.

lukev11• 2 years ago

End to end encryption by default, such that the cloud provider cannot access my data.

Easy.

jiggawatts• 2 years ago

There's some weird[1] laws around privacy in Australia, where government departments are blocked from a bunch of things by law. From my perspective as a citizen, this just results in annoyance such as having to fill out forms over and over to give the government data that they already have.

I heard a good definition from my dad: "Privacy for me is pedestrians walking past my window not seeing me step out of the shower naked, or my neighbours not overhearing our domestic arguments."

Basically, if the nude photos you're taking on your mobile phone can be seen by random people, then you don't have privacy.

Apple encrypts my photos so that the IT guy managing the storage servers can't see them. Samsung is the type of company that includes a screen-capture "feature" in their TVs so that they can profile you for ad-targeting. I guarantee you that they've collected and can see the pictures of naked children in the bathtub from when someone used screen mirroring from their phone to show their relatives pictures of their grandkids. That's not privacy.

Sure, I use Google services, but I don't upload naked kid pictures to anything owned by Alphabet corp, so no problem.

However, I will never buy any Samsung product for any purpose because they laugh and point at customer expectations of privacy.

[1] Actually not that weird. Now that I've worked in government departments, I "get" the need for these regulations. Large organisations are made up of individuals, and both the org and the individual people will abuse their access to data for their own benefit. Many such people will even think they're doing the "right thing" while destroying freedom in the process, like people that keep trying to make voting systems traceable... so that vote buying will become easy again.

geysersam2• 2 years ago

If you're so focused on privacy why don't you just use Linux? With Linux you'll actually get real privacy and you'll really truly own the system.

Apple takes a 30% tax on all applications running on their mobile devices. Just let that sink in. We are so incredibly lucky that never happened to PC.

EthicalSimilar• 2 years ago

As much as anyone can say otherwise, running Linux isn’t just a breeze. You will run into issues at some point, you will possibly have to make certain sacrifices regarding software or other choices. Yes it has gotten so much better over the past few years but I want my time spent on my work, not toying with the OS.

Another big selling point of Apple is the hardware. Their hardware and software are integrated so seamlessly. Things just work, and they work well. 99% of the time - there’s always edge cases.

There’s solutions to running Linux distros on some Apple hardware but again you have to make sacrifices.

snoman• 2 years ago

Which Linux?

microkrat• 2 years ago

I have used several distributions and daily driven linux for long periods of time (2-3 years) since 2008. Even today multimedia apps have issues, these can be solved by going through online forums, but it's always a frustrating start. Usually upgrades to software will re-introduce these issues and you will need to follow the same steps.

nkmskdmfodf14• 2 years ago

I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.

You either have have very low standards or very low understanding if you think a completely closed OS on top of completely closed hardware somehow means it 'really belongs' to you, or that your data/privacy is actually being respected.

asp_hornet• 2 years ago

Whats the alternative? Linux? Maybe OP likes that their OS doesnt crash when they close their laptop lid.

eilefsen• 2 years ago

"completely closed OS" is not accurate. apple releases a surprising amount of source code.

https://opensource.apple.com/releases/

siajdsioajd• 2 years ago

They just have really good marketing. You fell for their pandering. If you really care about privacy use Linux. But Apple ain't it. Closed source and proprietary will never be safe from corporate greed.

https://archive.ph/Z9z0H

bilbo0s3• 2 years ago

Linux doesn't give you privacy guy.

If you're using the web, your privacy is about your browser and your ISP, not your OS.

At times, it's even about how you use your browser. No browser will save you from telling google too much about yourself by using gmail, and viewing youtube videos, and using search. The AI's and algorithms collating all that information on the backend see right through "incognito" mode.

Telling people they can get security and privacy by using Linux, or windows, or mac just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat surface.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

Of late I have been imagining tears of joy rolling down the face of the person who decides to take it upon themself to sing the paeans of Apple Privacy Theatre on a given day. While Apple has been gleefully diluting privacy on their platforms (along with quality and stability of course). They are the masters at selling dystopian control, lock in, and software incompetence as something positive.

It's most dangerous that they own the closed hardware and they own the closed software and then they also get away with being "privacy champions". It's worse than irony.

heraldgeezer2• 2 years ago

I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.

Build a desktop PC, yes like a nerdy gamer. ^_^

Install Linux

Been the way for years.

theshrike795• 2 years ago

Gamer + Linux is asking for trouble though.

WuxiFingerHold3• 2 years ago

Nowadays, the only way to have a computer belonging to you is using Linux.

stouset4• 2 years ago

You hit the nail on the head. And it’s something virtually everyone else replying to you is completely missing.

Apple isn’t perfect. They’re not better at privacy than some absolutist position where you run Tails on RISC V, only connect to services over Tor, host your own email, and run your own NAS.

But of all the consumer focused hardware manufacturers and cloud services companies, they are the only ones even trying.

lavela• 2 years ago

You miss the point. It's not that I enact authority over my system in every detail all the time, but I want the ability to choose authority on the aspects that matter to me in a given circumstance.

factorialboy• 2 years ago

I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering.

Everytime you launch an app, Mac OS dials home.

stouset4• 2 years ago

This is flatly incorrect.

Before you reply that it’s definitely true, I encourage you to actually look up the details of the thing you think you’re upset about.

aa-jv• 2 years ago

actually bulletproof

Its only 'bulletproof' in PR and Ad copy, because for as long as the US is capable of undermining any tech company that operates within its purview with NSL's, the 'perception of security' is a total fallacy.

In other words, the technology is not bulletproof, no matter how hard the marketing people work to make it appear so - only the society within which the provider operates can provide that safety.

For some, this is an intolerable state of affairs - for others, perfectly tolerable.

nobodyandproud2• 2 years ago

I purchased my first iPhone and Mac during Cook’s tenure, and strictly due to his serious stance on privacy.

Writingdorky• 2 years ago

You are just joking right?

From a skill and trust point of view, Google is doing a lot better than apple will ever.

Including ondevice AI

qwertox• 2 years ago

"10:24 – Flushed the toilet" is certainly more easy to transmit than an audio file which then must be analyzed in a datacenter.

Let's see if they really care so much about privacy in 10 years, once LLM/AI has settled. But they do seem to respect it a lot more than Microsoft.

gofreddygo• 2 years ago

Apple isn't privacy focused. It can't at this size with this leadership.

Privacy puts user interests first. Apple doesn't.

Try exporting your private data (e.g. photos) from any modern apple device (one that you paid for and you fully own) to a non apple device that is an industry standard like a usb stick, or another laptop. Monitor some network traffic going out from your laptop. Try getting replacement parts for your broken idevice.

Others aren't pretending to put your interests first, Apple though...

Think for yourself.

I don't comment here often anymore. Don't bother.

jki2752• 2 years ago

I can do all of those things, I do them regularly, except replace broken parts as that's not something I really have had to deal with much.

Toutouxc2• 2 years ago

Couldn’t have picked a worse example. I can literally plug a USB stick into the iPad I’m typing on and export my photos directly onto it.

hackerbeat• 2 years ago

Can we just get a 32 inch iMac, please?

I'm getting tired of everything else being updated yet the product most needed is completely being neglected, and for years already.

And no, I don't wanna buy a separate tiny screen for thousands of dollars.

I'm also not interested in these tiny cubes you deem to be cool.

hermitcrab• 2 years ago

Does it still come with a crappy 1 year warranty?

kristianp4• 2 years ago

   > MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is up to 3x faster than M1 Pro (13)
   > (13) Testing conducted by Apple from August to October 2024 using preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M4 Pro, 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB of RAM and 4TB SSD, and production 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 32GB of RAM and 8TB SSD. Prerelease Redshift v2025.0.0 tested using a 29.2MB scene utilising hardware-accelerated ray tracing on systems with M4 Pro. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

So they're comparing software that uses raytracing present in the M3 and M4, but not in the M1. This is really misleading. The true performance increase for most workloads is likely to be around 15% over the M3. We'll have to wait for benchmarks from other websites to get a true picture of the differences.

Edit: If you click on the "go deeper on M4 chips", you'll get some comparisons that are less inflated, for example, code compilation on pro:

    14-inch MacBook Pro with M4  4.5x
    14-inch MacBook Pro with M3  3.8x
    13-inch MacBook Pro with M1  2.7x

So here the M4 Pro is 67% faster than the M1 Pro, and 18% faster than the M3 Pro. It varies by workload of course.

No benchmarks yet, but this article gives some tables of comparative core counts, max RAM and RAM bandwidths: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/10/apples-m4-m4-pro-and-m...

the_king5• 2 years ago

The single core performance looks really fast.

  Chip | Geekbench Score (Process)  
  ---- | ------------------------  
  M1   | 2,419 (5nm)  
  M2   | 2,658 (5nm)  
  M3   | 3,076 (3nm)  
  M4*  | 3,810 (3nm)

In my experience, single-core CPU is the best all-around indicator of how "fast" a machine feels. I feel like Apple kind of buried this in their press release.

M4 benchmark source: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8171874

tomcam4• 2 years ago

I don't know much about modern Geekbench scores, but it that chart seems to show that M1s are still pretty good? It appears that M4 is only about 50% faster. Somehow I would expect more like 100% improvement.

Flameproof suit donned. Please correct me because I'm pretty ignorant about modern hardware. My main interest is playing lots of tracks live in Logic Pro.

mjlee• 2 years ago

Apple claim up to 1.8x in the press release. They're cherry picking so 50% in a benchmark seems about right.

the_king5• 2 years ago

That's only single core. I think Logic is pretty optimized to use multiple cores (Apple demoed it on the 20 core Xeon Mac Pro back in 2019).

But if the M1 isn't the bottleneck, no reason to upgrade.

giantrobot• 2 years ago

The M1 was pretty fast when it debuted. If you own an M1 Mac its CPU has not gotten any slower over the years. While newer M-series might be faster, the old one is no slower.

The M1s are likely to remain pretty usable machines for a few years yet, assuming your workload has not or does not significantly change.

matthew-wegner2• 2 years ago

Some of it depends on which variant fits you best. But yeah, in general the M1 is still very good--if you hear of someone in your circle selling one for cheap because they're upgrading, nab it.

On the variants: An M1 Max is 10 CPU cores with 8 power and 2 efficiency cores.

M4 Max is 16 cores, 12 + 4. So each power core is 50% faster, but it also has 50% more of them. Add in twice as many efficiency cores, that are also faster for less power, plus more memory bandwidth, and it snowballs together.

One nice pseudo-feature of the M1 is that the thermal design of the current MacBook Pro really hasn't changed since then. It was designed with a few generations of headroom in mind, but that means it's very, very hard to make the fans spin on a 16" M1 Max. You have to utilize all CPU/GPU/NPU cores together to even make them move, while an M3 Max is easier to make (slightly) audible.

KptMarchewa5• 2 years ago

Those kinds of improvements are way of the past. Modern hardware is just too good.

lukev11• 2 years ago

It's not really buried... their headline stat is that it's 1.8x faster than the M1, which is actually a bigger improvement than the actual Geekbench score shows (it would be a score of 4354).

the_king5• 2 years ago

Call me cynical, but when I see headlines like "up to 2x faster", I assume it's a cherry-picked result on some workload where they added a dedicated accelerator.

There's a massive difference between "pretty much every app is 80% faster" and "if you render a 4K ProRes video in Final Cut Pro it's 3x faster."

giobox• 2 years ago

I feel like Apple kind of buried this in their press release

The press release describes the single core performance as the fastest ever made, full stop:

"The M4 family features phenomenal single-threaded CPU performance with the world’s fastest CPU core"

The same statement is made repeatedly across most the new M4 line up marketing materials. I think thats enough to get the point across that its a pretty quick machine.

the_king5• 2 years ago

Exactly my point. Saying something is the fastest ever is marketing code (at least to me) for minor improvement over the previous generation.

If you're 30% faster than the previous generation, I'd rather see that because my assumption is it's 5%.

sfmike3• 2 years ago

I maybe don't understand but isn't an intel at 5.5ghz faster in terms of bits processed then the 4.4ghz m4? wouldn't that be fastest as more data can be processed?

resource_waste• 2 years ago

lol

After decades of Apple, people still believe them.

pazimzadeh2• 2 years ago

that's interesting, the scores are accelerating? 9.8% better, 15.7% better, 23.8% better

choilive• 2 years ago

They also explicitly called it out in their announcement videos that the M4 has the fastest CPU cores on the market.

kadomony• 2 years ago

Conversely, the M3 supposedly has better multi core performance? How is that possible?

wmf2• 2 years ago

It doesn't.

kwanbix• 2 years ago

Mx is such a incredible achievement by apple.

Sadly installing Linux is a no unless you use some budu.

ezfe3• 2 years ago

Installing Linux is easy...

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh• 2 years ago

Absolutely incredible to see Apple pushing performance like this.

I can't wait to buy one and finally be able to open more than 20 Chrome tabs.

KptMarchewa5• 2 years ago

For a year, maybe. Web apps will use the opportunity and get slower enough so that you'll get old experience on new hardware soon.

toxicdevil• 2 years ago

These numbers are misleading (as in not apples to apples comparison). M4 has a matrix multiply hardware extension which can accelerate code written (or compiled) specifically for this extension.

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40339248

grecy2• 2 years ago

So you're saying Apple added something to the design to make it do things faster...which is literally the definition of improvement.

When a company adds a supercharger to a car does it not count as faster?

When I add more solar panels to my roof does it not count as more power?

Surely doing this kind of thing is exactly what we want companies to be doing to make their products faster/better.

WithinReason• 2 years ago

Technically it is Apples to Apples

KeplerBoy2• 2 years ago

I wonder how reliable geekbench tests are. Afaik it's the most common benchmark run on apple devices, so apple has a great interest in making sure their newest chips perform great on the test.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the geekbench developers are heavily supported by apple's own performance engineers and that testing might not be as objective or indicative of real world perf as one would hope.

zamadatix6• 2 years ago

Wouldn't it be more surprising to you Apple has been selling 4 generations of the M series to great acclaim on the performance but it all turned out to be a smoke and mirrors show because the hardware is optimized for one particular benchmark they didn't even reference in their comparisons?

From the data side: the M4 hasn't made it to the charts yet but the M3 already holds the 4th place in PassMark's single thread chart as well https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html as well as tops Cinebench 2024 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_2024_s...

The only areas the M series "lags" is in the high end workstation/server segment where they don't really have a 96+ core option or in spaces where you pop in beefy high end GPUs. Everything else the M4 tends to lead in right now.

crest• 2 years ago

Beware that some of the Geekbench number are the result of them suddenly gaining support for streaming SVE and SME just when Apple implements it.

I'm not doubting the number represent real peak throughput on M4. There is just a taste to the timing lining up so well. Also they don't take advantage of fully SVE2 capable ARM cores to compare how much a full SVE2 implementation would help especially at accelerating more algorithms than those that neatly map to streaming SVE and SME.

The single core performance gains of M4 variants over their predecessors are distorted, because the streaming SVE and SME are apparently implemented by combining what used to be them AMX units of four cores.

drunkenmagician• 2 years ago

Processor roadmaps a multi year plans, I doubt Apple aligned their roadmap to geekbench supporting SVE. More likely a happy alignment of plan(et)s.

seec3• 2 years ago

It's kinda true but also not at all. In general, having better single thread performance means a more reactive UI and snappier feeling because blocking operation gets executed more quickly. On the other hand, many modern software having been extremely optimized for multi-threading and not all categories of software benefit that much from faster UI thread. If parallelization isn't too expansive, throwing more core at something can make it actually faster.

And the big thing you leave out is that it all depends on how well the software is optimise, how much animations it use and things like that. My iPhone has MUCH better single-thread performance than my old PC, yet it feels much slower for almost everything.

And this is exactly how I feel about Apple Silicon Macs. On paper, impressive performance. In actual practice it doesn't feel that fast.

cjbprime3• 2 years ago

Does anyone understand this claim from the press release?

M4 Max supports up to 128GB of fast unified memory and up to 546GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 4x the bandwidth of the latest AI PC chip. This allows developers to easily interact with large language models that have nearly 200 billion parameters.

Having more memory bandwidth is not directly helpful in using larger LLM models. A 200B param model requires at least 200GB RAM quantized down from the original precision (e.g. "bf16") to "q8" (8 bits per parameter), and these laptops don't even have the 200GB RAM that would be required to run inference over that quantized version.

How can you "easily interact with" 200GB of data, in real-time, on a machine with 128GB of memory??

kristianp4• 2 years ago

q4 or q5 quantization.

Edit: Actually you'd want q3 to fit a 200B model into 128GB of RAM. e.g. this one is about 140GB https://huggingface.co/lmstudio-community/DeepSeek-V2.5-GGUF...

cjbprime3• 2 years ago

Wouldn't it be incredibly misleading to say you can interact with an LLM, when they really mean that you can lossy-compress it to like 25% size where it becomes way less useful and then interact with that?

(Isn't that kind of like saying you can do real-time 4k encoding when you actually mean it can do real-time 720p encoding and then interpolate the missing pixels?)

joshdavham3• 2 years ago

Question to more senior Mac users: how do you usually decide when to upgrade?

I bought my first Macbook pro about a year and a half ago and it's still working great.

y7• 2 years ago

When it stops working great. My 2014 Macbook is about due for an upgrade, mostly due to the GPU struggling with a 4K screen.

sequoia• 2 years ago

The 2014 model I bought in early 2015 still works, though the battery is dodgy. I did get the motherboard replaced in 2020 which was pricey, but much cheaper than a new machine.

Is there some reason your current computer isn't working for you? If not, why upgrade? Use it as long as you can do so practically & easily.

On the other extreme, I knew someone who bought a new MBP with maximum RAM specs each year. She'd sell the old one for a few hundred less than she paid, then she always had new hardware with applecare. It was basically like leasing a machine for $400/yr.

aequitas• 2 years ago

My previous Macbook was a Pro model from 2015, I waited 6 years to finally upgrade to an M1 Air because of the awful touchbar models they had in between (though I'm still using the 2015 Pro for personal stuff, in fact right now. It's upgraded to the latest macOS using OpenCore and it still runs great). But I would say upgrade every 3-5 years depending on heavy a professional user you are.

AdamJacobMuller8• 2 years ago

The touchbar was useful in one important way.

Because it made the esc key useless for touch typists and because, as a vi user, I hit esc approximately a bazillion times per day I mapped caps lock to esc.

Now my fingers don't travel as far to hit esc.

I still use that mapping even on my regular keyboards and my current non-touch-bar macs.

Thanks touchbar macs, rest in peace.

thenaturalist3• 2 years ago

Ask 3 people, get 5 answers.

Got the money, are in the consumerism camp: Switch to latest model every year because the camera island changed 5mm.

Got the professional need in games or video and your work isn't covering your device: Switch to new model every couple of generations.

Be me: I want to extend the lifecycle of things I use. Learn how to repair what you own (it's never been as easy), be aware of how you can work in today's world (who needs laptop RAM if I can spin up containers in the cloud) - I expect to not upgrade until a similarly stellar step up in the category of Intel to Apple Silicone comes along.

All past Mx versions being mostly compared to Intel baselines: Boring. M4 1.8 times faster than M1 Pro: Nice, but no QoL change. For the few times I might need it, I can spin up a container in the cloud.

My display is excellent.

14 inch is the perfect screen size.

Battery life is perfect.

joshdavham3• 2 years ago

Great answer, thank you!

__d• 2 years ago

Pick a daily cost you’re comfortable with. If you’re contracting at say $500/day, how much are you willing to spend on having a responsive machine? $10? $20?

Multiply it out: 220 work days a year * $10/day is $2200 a year towards your laptop.

Upgrade accordingly.

htk2• 2 years ago

People have different passions, I like computers. If I feel a new Mac is going to be fun for whatever reason, I consider upgrading it. Performance wise they last a long time, so I could keep them way longer than I do, but I enjoy newer and more capable models. You can always find someone to buy the older model. Macs have a great second hand market.

dgellow2• 2 years ago

Depends if it is a personal machine or paid by your company. 5+ years is what I generally expect from an apple laptop (been using them since around 2007-2009) if I own. For an M1-3 that could be a bit longer. If it is paid by your company, then whenever you have the budget :)

joshdavham3• 2 years ago

5+ years is what I generally expect

Sounds like a good rule of thumb.

Can I also ask what kind of work you do on it? I suspect that some work probably wears out computers faster than other sorts of work.

satvikpendem5• 2 years ago

On major remodels or with compelling features. I had an i9 MacBook Pro and then upgraded to anM1 MacBook Pro because it was a major leap forward. However, I will wait until the MacBook Pro is redesigned yet again (maybe thinner and lighter as I travel a lot and carry-on weight is limited), apparently in 2026 or so with OLED and other features, rumors say.

_19qg2• 2 years ago

I'm using them for several years - I still have a Mac mini (from 2012) and an iMac Pro (from 2017) running. I also get a company Macbook which I can upgrade every three years.

But there is also another strategy: get a new Mac when they come out and sell it before/after the next model appears. There is a large market for used Macs. A friend of mine has been doing this for quite some time.

densh• 2 years ago

I update largely based on non performance criteria:

- new display tech

- better wireless connectivity

- updated protocols on ports (e.g., support for higher res displays and newer displayport/hdmi versions)

- better keyboard

- battery life

Once a few of those changes accumulate over 4+ generations of improvements that’s usually the time for me to upgrade.

My laptops so far: first 2008 plastic macbook, 2012 macbook pro, 2015 macbook pro, and M1 pro 16 currently. I skipped 2016-2020 generation which was a massive step backwards on my upgrade criteria, and updated to 2015 model in 2016 once I realized apple has lost their marbles and has no near plans on making a usable laptop at the time.

Also getting a maxed out configuration really helps the longevity.

squishy47• 2 years ago

I just pre-ordered the m4 pro. upgrading from a late 2013 mbp with a battery that would probably void my home insurance if they found out.

can't justify the constant upgrade when it doesn't make me money (work provide one). very excited about the new one though

EugeneOZ• 2 years ago

No OLED = skip. Your microBlaBla just causes headeaches.

joeevans10002• 2 years ago

Insane cost for the amount of storage and RAM. I mean, year over year for Apple, awesome! Compared to the rest of the brands... so ridiculously expensive. Watching the price climb to 5K as you add in the new normal for hardware specs is absurd.

phs318u2• 2 years ago

The single most annoying thing about this announcement for me is the fact that I literally just paid for an Asus ProArt P16 [0] on the basis that the Apple offerings I was looking at were too expensive. Argh!

[0] https://au.store.asus.com/proart-p16-h7606wi-me124xs.html

semiinfinitely• 2 years ago

Great I cant wait for the software bloat to expand and make these the only machines that feel fast

dgellow2• 2 years ago

Damn, I just bought an M3

timothyduong• 2 years ago

Can return it if you bought it recently.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

This is the first time they have not obscenely limited their starter offerings with 8GB RAM. The time it took them to do that is just pathetic. Now I guess this will happen until how long? Maybe 2034 - and starting RAM 16GB. I wish I could say it's a welcome change but in 2024 for such overpriced machine if they are starting with 16GB RAM then that's anything but special. Also, I am sure the SSDs and RAMs are still soldered tight :)

If only they could allow their iPads to be used as a Mac screen natively I might buy a Mini and an iPad and get done with it two use cases but why would Apple want users to be able to do that without extra expense.

userbinator• 2 years ago

At least it appears they didn't hide the power button on the bottom.

treprinum2• 2 years ago

I hoped for at least 192GB of RAM for LLMs as 48GB DDR5 are pretty normal nowadays.

xcv1232• 2 years ago

They want you to buy a Mac Pro or Studio for that

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

saw very little discourse in the fact that apple silicon is following a "tick-tock" approach, very much like intel in the 2010s.

for the sake of annual releases we get a new number, but besides increased silicon area, the major architectural changes seem to come every couple years.

about time 16gb was the default on something that costs four figures. the on-device ai craze in this lineup has finally pushed the company to give adequate memory.

aorth3• 2 years ago

Four generations into the new platform and there is no answer from anyone else in the industry. Incredible.

BossingAround2• 2 years ago

Intel's Core 5/Core 7/Core 9 are an answer.

aorth3• 2 years ago

I dunno. Four years ago the MacBook M1 Pro was able to compile WebKit nearly as fast as the Mac Pro, and nearly twice as fast as the Intel-based MacBook Pro, and still had 91% battery versus 24% in the Intel-based MacBook Pro. Incredible.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...

preisschild• 2 years ago

I switched my work M1 Max with an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS Framework 16 running Linux and am happier since.

I guess it depends on the person which computer is better for them.

ElCapitanMarkla2• 2 years ago

I wish I could get that option but I'm still waiting for an NZ release :(

greggroth• 2 years ago

I'm torn between the new M4 MBP and a Framework laptop with Linux for my personal computer. Can you share some deciding factors for you? Does it mostly come down to the OS? How is the battery life with the Framework?

tucosan• 2 years ago

Why are you happier exactly?

jsnndjxjd• 2 years ago

There are both more powerful and more battery efficient offers available.

The Apple ARM laptops are just on an arbitrary point belong the power/efficiency scale.

If it happens to match your needs: great

But it's not like it's ahead of the industry in any way ^^

aorth3• 2 years ago

It's suspicious that your account created 1 day ago and you say there are more powerful and more battery efficient offers available but don't give an example.

P.S. writing to you from a six year old ThinkPad running Linux. I'm not an Apple fanboy. It is my opinion that Apple's products are leagues ahead of the rest of the industry and it's not even close: performance, efficiency, and build quality are incredible.

fredgrott• 2 years ago

You probably missed this....

If you look at the top of line Apple mini at 64gig ram it seems to replace Apple Studio for certain use cases...

consumerx• 2 years ago

Been using Pro products for almost 15 years and I just switched to a Lenovo Thinkpad and Ubuntu. This is so much more fun and innovative. Apple reached a plato, you can like it or not.

nobodyandproud2• 2 years ago

I suspect that like many here, I’m often tech support for my family.

I found a Mac to be just as simple and troublefree to support as a Chromebook, but more capable.

I was very pleasantly surprised, coming from mostly Windows (and a dash of Linux).

baggachipz• 2 years ago

My parents simply refuse to consider anything but Windows, even though the ever-changing Windows UI keeps pissing them off. It's like a mental block or something.

bjelkeman-again• 2 years ago

I stopped supporting Windows. Mom had to swap if she wanted support from me.

xandrius• 2 years ago

No support then.

But when I gave my mom OSX, she used it and managed to survive. Even Ubuntu was ok for her.

And if she managed, I'm sure most people can.

sfmike3• 2 years ago

I wonder if apple intelligence will be resource heavy and this is the reason for the RAM increase across the board.

munksbeer• 2 years ago

For the gamers amongst you, do any of you game on your MacBook Pro Ms? If so, which one? Is there a noticeable difference in game quality between the M1 Pro vs M3 Pro for example?

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

Is the SSD still soldered, so if your macbook dies so does your data?

r_hanz• 2 years ago

Does iCloud mitigate this? It’s always confused me that iCloud is intended only as a data sync and not back-up… If one device goes down and the rest still work, could you still access data from the dead device?

ethagknight• 2 years ago

I wish Apple would include a USB-C data port or 2 on their big charger brick for the same single-cord bliss that the iMac enjoys (while plugged in). My little USB hubs that I carry around cant sufficiently power the MacBook pro

M4 MacBook Pro

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