YMMV though, I briefly owned a 5900HS/3080 Zephyrus G15 and though it was indeed a powerhouse, it absolutely got more hot and way WAY more noisy than my 16” M1 Pro does now doing the same things, while overall not being as nice of a laptop (far worse screen, somewhat chintzy build, meh speakers, barrel power connector, huge power brick, bad battery life, etc).

That G15 was better at some things than my M1 Pro is now but not by enough that I’d want it over the M1 Pro, even considering the price difference.

what kinds of workloads are you running? I bought the exact same asus laptop to be a portable gaming machine, but I've been surprised at how nice it is for normal laptop stuff. unless I'm playing a game or compiling a large project, I just leave it in "silent" mode and never hear fans.

everything you say about the build quality is definitely true, but I couldn't find anything better that a) had a 3080/3070 and b) was actually in stock.

It was mainly gaming that would get it roaring, but compiling code among other things would spin the fans up a bit too. I didn’t put it in “silent” mode except when doing light things like web browsing because it felt like a waste of the hardware otherwise with how silent mode downclocks and limits boost speeds.

I guess I rationalize that all the money went towards higher binned parts that at least clock a few hundred mhz higher than ultrabook parts in silent mode. but yeah I get that. glad you were able to find a machine you're happy with :)

This thread is really interesting to read because if the same thread had been made a couple of years ago, before Apple released its M1 laptops, it would have been filled with Apple fans who would be saying that the Intel MBPs were the best thing since sliced bread and that the users were doing something wrong.

I think the only time Apple fans actually accepted that an Apple product was actually bad was the trashcan Mac Pro, and that was only because they went half a decade without upgrading it and they replaced a beloved design with one that was branded as a trash can.

> This thread is really interesting to read because if the same thread had been made a couple of years ago, before Apple released its M1 laptops, it would have been filled with Apple fans who would be saying that the Intel MBPs were the best thing since sliced bread and that the users were doing something wrong.

I work on an Apple laptop; all of my colleagues work on Apple laptops.

Maybe what you say is true in the spaces you find yourself in, but in all the spaces I chat about these things (Android developer community) none of your claims are true. The general feeling about the last generation of Intel MBPs was initially one of relief that they didn't f** up the keyboard, and then slow dawning disappointment as we realized that the thermal design of the machine was abysmal.

Up until this most recent M1Pro/Max iteration, things were getting so bad that many professionals I know were at least considering a move off of the Mac platform that most of us have been on for a decade or more. Many of us need to compile iOS code occasionally, of course, which means we're kind of stuck.

The M1Max has completely changed all that. One of the senior engineers I know actually put together some benchmarking numbers of compile times, assembled a spreadsheet of every engineer with a pending hardware upgrade, and added up the numbers for a budget ask to buy every single engineer at their company a top of the line 64GB M1Max. The final bill added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and just putting it together took a lot of time for this person.

It was approved!

So yeah, there's some real turkey on the bone here. It's not all fanboy hype.

There is only a small percentage of users of products who can be described as ‘fans’ in the sense that they will defend the products even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they have problems.

There is a much larger percentage of people for whom the world is not black and white, there is no picking of a ‘team’, and they will use whatever works for them or make do with what they have, moving between brands and models over time.

Please don’t push the ‘Apple fans’ narrative here. There are lots of us who are just trying to get stuff done and have civilised discussion, not engage in polarised mid slinging.

> Apple fans who would be saying that the Intel MBPs were the best thing since sliced bread and that the users were doing something wrong

Maybe if you only mean the 2015 models, sure. But models between 2015 and the M1s were trounced by everyone, even Apple fans, for their keyboard issues and throttling the i9.

I had a 2017 i7, and it was the worst Mac I ever owned.

Yeah, my Apple machine until June this year was a 2015 MBP and people were willing to pay almost full price for it until the M1s came out.

Hmm. I find the interesting part of this thread is all the deny at any cost comments. Apple has created a power/performance tradeoff that is way off the charts from the performance path that Intel was on. The deniers keep saying there must be lint in the Intel machine, Apple's thermal design wasn't good, etc. There is plenty of hard data out there with respect to numerous Intel based machines. Intel cannot come close to the power/performance point that Apple is now occupying.

Here is a different sort of data point. I have two Windows programs I need to run on my M1 Pro MB 16. One is an Intel binary and one has been recompiled to ARM. I am running them both under Win11 ARM on a Parallels virtual machine. I am getting better and more responsive performance than I ever did on dedicated Intel hardware. No noticeable fan noise or heat. It is really just a different beast than I have ever used before. Of course, native Mac apps are also much quicker.

Here is another data point from my own machines. 2019 i9 MB Pro Geekbench single core score is 1024. x86 Geekbench single core on M1 MB Pro 16" (x86 emulation) is 1347. Native ARM Geekbench on Win 10 virtual machine running on M1 Pro is 1560. Native single core Geekbench on M1 Pro is 1734. Multi core is 12400.

Look, Intel performance gains over the past decade have been incremental at best. It makes sense to be skeptical that Apple could change the rules like this. I suggest folks just get one of these machines and run their own benchmarks. Apple will give you a full refund, no questions asked for 14 days from the date you receive it. Don't just throw stones, try it yourself.

The last few years have been Apple fans pissed off about the terrible keyboard they threw in, the touchbar, and the notebooks getting too slim at the expense of performance and cost. I don't remember anyone hyping up the last-gen laptops.