Not just that, but if you're not running ARM images then it's running a VM for your docker images to boot. It's just mind-blowing how many containers I have running and my laptop is cool to the touch, and at full battery.

You’re running a VM either way on a Mac. Docker without a VM is only available on Linux

Yep! But at least it can leverage hyperkit and vastly reduce overhead when running images of matching architecture.

hyperkit does not run on ARM Macs

  $ brew install hyperkit
  hyperkit: The x86_64 architecture is required for this software.
  Error: hyperkit: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.

Oh I didn't realize, thanks for pointing that out. I guess they'll have to rely on the new virtualization framework going forward.

MacOS can run MacOS containers natively, but I understand that's not much help for most people.

https://macoscontainers.org/

That’s interesting. It’s in 0.0.1 version though but it seems like a possible drop in replacement

Without network, IPC, PID and cgroup namespaces replacements it's not even close. How Windows Server does it? By using parts of Hyper-V.

Yeah, but that also requires disabling SIP, so you still might want to run it in a VM.

Aw. I wish there was a way to isolate corpoware crap like Citrix into its own little jail. Kinda like {tool,distro}box on Linux.

And on Windows while running Windows containers.

Before anyone else gets confused...Windows containers are only for Windows applications. If you have a Linux environment in your Docker image, then it's running on a VM. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...

Of course, what is there to be confused about?

It say it clearly on the name, Windows containers.

This isn't as much the case anymore. There are typically arm64 images available for the more popular images, and anything you build locally is native, unless you're trying to build x86 software.

Redis, Memcached, PostgreSQL, MySQL- it's all native arm64 images now.

> if you're not running ARM images

The point was that there is rarely a reason to not run ARM images, since they’re widely available.

If I’m running M3 images on my Ryzen, performance is gonna be horrible, but why would I?

Today? Sure. Thus my statement, which came with a caveat about not running ARM images, the implication being that it's a rare thing today.

Even using ARM images you still need a VM because the MacOS kernel is not a Linux kernel, and containers rely on features of that kernel.

That only really helps if you also want to deploy on arm64. Developing on one architecture and deploying on another would kind of destroy on of the advantages of containers.

Do note that cool to the touch is a bad thing if the internals are otherwise hot

If the all-aluminum chassis remains cool to the touch despite boiling internals, that's impressive in its own right :-)

There were comparisons to the M1 and M2 in the presentation, and indeed the linked website.

The M3 chips are 30% faster than the M2 chips for efficiency cores and 15% faster for performance cores. The overall performance is still impressive and there is no alternative to M*s when compared with performance per watt. But others have caught up, for example https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs is very good.

> But others have caught up

You mean others now got to use TSMC's 4nm process? These new M3 chips are probably on the 3nm process, Apple is still a generation ahead here.

It looks like Apples aim is to always stay a generation ahead of its competition, I wonder how long they can keep that up since they aren't running their own fabs.

They are literally on the 3nm process. They say so in the video.

Ok, so no probably, they are on 3nm. Anyway my point that they are a generation ahead still stands.

Apple signed a deal with TSMC to purchase nearly all of their available 3nm chips for the next year. Ethical or not, they positioned themselves to ensure almost no competitors could develop on 3nm until they did first since no fab on earth has the scale of TSMC. They could ride this plan for years if it pays them.

How is Apple buying all the production slots for a process in any way unethical? It's not like they're buying them and then burying the chips in a landfill. They paid TSMC's asking price for production slots. AMD or Intel could have bought those same slots but didn't. TSMC has limited capacity at 3nm, it was up for sale, Apple bought it. Where's the ethics question?

I’ve seen argument for ‘business ethics’ before from the losing side. It’s sometimes part of a media campaign. It’s likely cheaper than legal action.

>How is Apple buying all the production slots for a process in any way unethical?

This has been the case on HN for more than 5 years. Intel Fabs used to sell their industry best node to only Intel themselves, and charges a premium for those newer CPU. I guess that is unethical too.

How is Google buying search defaults on all iPhones in any way unethical? It's not like they're buying them and then burying the searches in a landfill. They paid Apple's asking price for search defaults. Microsoft or Brave could have bought those same search defaults but didn't. Apple has a limited amount of search defaults on iPhones, it was up for sale, Google bought it. Where's the ethics question?

not only is outbidding the competition not unethical (as a sibling notes), apple actually is very involved in the early node work etc. a lot of this work is literally done for apple, it is "exclusive games" in the "this game would not have been made without the sponsorship" sense. this literally would not have been brought to market on the same timelines if Tim Apple wasn't signing a couple billion dollars a year to TSMC right upfront.

Apple pays lavishly to support TSMC's early node research, and they get their say in what happens in the R&D process, and very early insight into the node and their say on how it would work for them as they do their rollout. TSMC gets carried through the research phases much faster than their competitors can do, and it's led them to be on an absolute tear starting with 7nm. And they absolutely cannot fill the same level of demand with the same level of R&D funding from any of their competitors.

It's been a healthy, productive long-term partnership, TSMC is maybe the only supplier Apple can't boss around and Apple is certainly a client that is always too big to fire. Doesn't mean every apple product is good (and TSMC can still flub, and their competitors are catching up a little bit) but Apple can move whatever they need to lol, they are masters of supply chain managment. They can cover TSMC's mistakes if needed, and they have insight into exactly what is happening as the node is developed and how they need to maneuver their product stack around to exploit it.

Engineers study designs, CEOs study logistics. Also true of NVIDIA btw lol, they are very logistics-oriented because they make up such a large marketshare. How many companies on the planet are ordering big bulk runs of GDDR? Well, if we are ordering 20% of the planet's GDDR on a fixed timetable then maybe we can get a custom version, micron, right? (9 months later, GDDR5X/6X is born lol)

It is an interesting contrast to Intel - this is almost the same kind of synergistic relationship as intel's own fab and IP side have historically had together. Did intel fail because they had a tight fab-design coupling, or did they fail because they had a rotted internal culture and then the fab slipped a bunch?

Not running their own fabs makes it easier, right? They presumably pay a premium for being the first to use a generation, but not anywhere near as much as the full cost of developing it, since TSMC can sell that capacity to everybody else when they are done with it.

Oryon seems to have caught up in performance despite being on N4 (which is just 5nm++), but it's an ARM design from the guys who made M1 in the first place.

M3 seems like it generally underwhelms. A17 had like a 3% increase in IPC. They didn't discuss battery much and I suspect that's because ramping the clockspeeds to over 4GHz isn't so good for the battery benchmarks.

The most worrying part is the transistor count. M3 Max gets quite a bit higher transistor count, but M3 is only 37B transistors while M1 was 33.7B. Apple and/or N3 absolutely suck here.

Looks like I might be keeping my M1 system for yet another upgrade cycle.

the backstory here is that TSMC N3 is a trainwreck, it's now separated into two different nodes, N3B (for bad) and N3E (enhanced). N3E gets the promised step that was originally for N3, but it only enters volume production next year. Supposedly it will actually bring costs down (and yields up) because this is where some additional steps go EUV. Both TSMC and Samsung have been fucking around with their marketing around nodes to try and say they're first in volume 4nm production, but both are having problems with the final bosses of FINFET at 3nm and after this both TSMC and Samsung do GAAFET and solve a different set of problems. Past that lies... nothing. Hyper-NA seems dead.

In the meantime, M3 is on N3B despite very low yields, which surely applied design pressure to keep size down, and the power gains are not as good, and also the density is worse than promised. Apple also surely feels pressure to keep prices high (bait-tier M3 base option with 8GB lol) and honestly they probably are going to be tough to justify on a performance/efficiency basis compared to very fierce ARMv8 competition (we are now testing the thesis there's no difference lol). Apple still has advantages but man do they take you to the cleaners for the result, a loaded apple laptop is obscene. I chose to go for an older loaded M1 Max instead of waiting for M3, because I could actually get a nice laptop that wouldn't impose limits on a prosumer etc. 1TB is all anyone can afford still and that's really silly.

(SSD prices in particular are absolutely inexcusable lol. Mandate a M.2 NVMe 3.0/4.0/+ port please, EU, it's time. Don't care how it works, slot it into the side or whatever if you want, it can be single-sided 2230 or 2242 if you want, but it's time.)

I also wonder if losing a bunch of the PA Semi team to whatever startup (it may have been nuvia or tenstorrent lol) may also have hurt apple's velocity on A16/A17. There were a lot of apple silicons before M1, after all. But certainly TSMC is a bunch of the problem here.

I think they'll hustle to refresh it and do M3+ as a fast follow in 6-12 months with N3E, the cost economics are very favorable to jump as soon as there's the volume. That doesn't mean MBP gets refreshed immediately though, they'll ramp on the phones (iphone 16/16 pro, etc) and base-tier M3+ or whatever first.

>the backstory here is that TSMC N3 is a trainwreck, it's now separated into two different nodes, N3B (for bad) and N3E (enhanced).

Without N3B, there will never be N3E.

It was the same with N7. And none of these are new to a new node generation.

> But others have caught up

Then you proceed to link to one that... hasn't? (it's good, yes, but it's not caught up at all)

I note that if those performance numbers are correct it'll still be a lot slower than Intel's Core i9-13980HX laptop CPU. The M2 Max was between 50% and 80% of the speed of the 13980HX on most benchmarks. A 15%-30% uplift will get it closer to the Intel part but still not reach it.

Good point.

However, when they’re that close in performance, I think power usage should be taken into account. It’s a laptop CPU after all. Maybe I’d rather have 80% of the performance at 4x the battery life

Did you account for the M3 Max having four extra performance cores (12 versus 8 for the M2 Max)?

Yeah, but the problem is that 13980HX has 24 cores, 32 threads and incredible 157W Turbo Power. That means it will be really slow when on battery. And when connected to the mains, it'll be as loud as an airplane taking off.

The perf per watt claims still apply.

I imagine the amount of people upgrading from an M2 Mac will be close to 0, while there's a lot of Intel stragglers out there.

I think the point is more that "is it worth buying this new m3 or should I buy a secondhand m2 for half the price?"

more like "a hundred bucks less". The M1's go for maybe half... if you're lucky. Most are more.

Because there's a newer model, which is now true for the M2 ones too?

M1’s took a hit because multiple processors came out each gen. Remember: the M1 was superseded by both the Pro & the Max (and the unites but that’s not in a MacBook).

By the time the M2 came around ppl knew what was up. So you might be able to find a bog standard M1 that low (they do show up) due to this… but it’s rare.

I don't think you're going to find any M2s for half the price. They hold their value pretty solidly.

They won't if the M3 turns out to be a significant upgrade.

That’s honestly just not how Apple hardware resale value has ever worked. The new M3 hardware could double the performance of the previous generation and they would only drop in price by maybe a few hundred.

One big outlier; the recent Intel Macs have dropped far more in value than expected.

And that outlier is the last /significant/ difference in performance.

M1->M2 wasn't that big, generally seen as a small incremental improvement at best, and the last few Intel updates barely moved the needle between them.

I see ones like mine on eBay for more than 50% of what I paid for it, and it's four years old.

Or should I buy a brand new M2 Mac Mini for half the price of iMac M3 if I already own a monitor. Or a M2 Pro for the same price where iMac M3 doesn’t even have a counterpart.

Intel straggler here. And I'll remain one until Linux runs flawlessly on the newer generation. I have an older Thinkpad as my main workhorse and a now quite old Macbook air for on the road, it's battery has been shot for a long time but it still works quite good when plugged in and I'm too much of a miser to have it replaced. But if there is a way to run a full Linux distro on the newer hardware then I'll probably buy one. But I'm under no illusion that Apple makes their hardware to cater to me and that's perfectly fine.

Replace it yourself using iFixit instructions and parts. Just screws and plugs, easy peasy.

was going to say this as well. The battery replacement process is pretty easy.

> it's battery has been shot for a long time but it still works quite good when plugged in and I'm too much of a miser to have it replaced

Consider a battery pack? I have a Bluetti K2 and get far more hours running heavy workloads than people report on M1. It's never bothered me carrying it around, though some might care I guess.

My only regret is that it's slightly over the amount that is legal on planes in most jurisdictions.

Guessing using two smaller capacity battery packs instead isn't workable?

The KWh limit on planes is a total amount, not individual device, I guess you can split it up amongst people if you want to.

Gotten so much mileage out of this laptop battery, especially on long distance trains, but it's a no go on planes by being so slightly over the limit.

Check out asahilinux.org - I have archlinux arm running as my main OS on Air M1 for a year now.

[delayed]

I recommend sponsoring Hector Martin here: https://github.com/sponsors/marcan

Yes, he's continuing to work on the long tail of drivers needed for Linux on Apple silicon. Looks like lately he's working on speakersafetyd, a daemon that will monitor audio levels and keep the builtin speakers from being damaged: https://github.com/marcan?tab=overview&from=2023-09-01&to=20...

You shouldn't link to Asahi Linux sites or individuals here - they (Asahi) don't like that.

How is anyone supposed to know this etiquette rule that you claim? As far as I know people are free to link to whatever they like subject to the laws of relevant jurisdictions.

For my part I would say that you shouldn't police other people and tell them what to do in public, or if you do it, soften it sightly.

You're not supposed to know it, unless someone tells you - that's what I'm doing.

I completely agree that "don't link to my site" is a ridiculous request - I'm not saying that I approve of it. But it's what they want - and the Asahi project has numerous problems with it anyway, so avoiding drawing attention from HN has some benefits to everyone.

My apologies if it sounded like I was policing - that was not my intent.

What problems?

Read for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793049 Creator of Asahi Linux didn’t like the way some HN commenters talked about the project and/or some livestreams in that and other threads, and started trying to block incoming links with a HN referer.

they do not want articles submitted as HN posts, and actively have code to monitor if such a thing happens. Do not spread misinformation that they do not want people linking to it in comments in response to completely valid Linux on Mac questions

If you think it's a ridiculous request to not link to them, then why did you say I shouldn't link to them in the first place?

I reject the notion that I shouldn't link to someone in good faith, regardless of whether they like it.

I said that you shouldn't because Marcan is a toxic and abrasive individual, and so not linking to him or the Asahi Linux project is beneficial.

> I reject the notion that I shouldn't link to someone in good faith, regardless of whether they like it.

In general, I completely agree!

How many hours of battery life do you typically get when running Linux on the M1?

I'm still holding out for HDMI output support so I can use it with the dock at work. But otherwise the project looks really good.

HDMI port? That’ll be $500. Cash or card?

I don't know if this is at all helpful, but I have Ubuntu running nicely inside Orbstack on a Mac Studio. Obviously it's all running inside MacOS though, but it works.

I'm curious. I run Ubuntu in a VM Fusion VM on my (Intel) Mac. Would that not work on a M-series Mac?

Absolutely! VMWare Fusion supports Apple Silicon (as do several other VM software, like Parallels.

my intel died last week. had to get an m2 pro and THIS drops today. kinda salty that my intel couldn' have held out till the M3 was available

Apple has a 14 day return policy. Don't need a reason.

https://www.apple.com/shop/help/returns_refund

I bought a top spec Intel mac a month before the M1 came out. Just sold that computer for 1/3 it's original price :\

1/3 is pretty good for a used computer, TBH.

I usually get like 20% or less... sometimes they're hard to even give away.

Fair, this one was in literally perfect condition though. No scratches / damage and a brand new battery.

It's like buying a car. The moment your Mac walks out of the store, the ghost of Steve Jobs comes and personally curses it to 2/3 of its value that very instant.

Except with cars, that loss is against the sticker price. So if you get a good enough deal on your new car, it can in fact lose nothing when you drive it away (I got close to 1/3 off a new car in 2018, using a web-based buying agent, in the UK).

It's very hard to get anything like that much off a Mac, since Apple appears to have pretty tight control over prices, even as charged by third parties.

I don't recall if the M1 was a secret/surprise (I doubt it).

Before buying any Apple hardware, it's worth looking up a couple of sites that suggest when the next release cycle will be for a given item and what specs are expected in the next release. The one I use is https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

M1 was not a surprise.

After years of waiting for a non-butterfly keyboard, they released a working Intel based MBP, but almost immediately made it worthless by announcing the migration to Arm. They even "rented" prototypes using A12Z chips for developers to use to prepare their apps nearly a year in advance. Hardly a stealth endeavour.

This is what returns are for! It is definitely worth the hassle for a better chip

“Last week” is well within the 2-week return window.

unless you went second hand, you should still be covered with the 30 day return policy no?

wow it's 14! definitely need to hurry up :)

I'm one of them. For work, come and grab my 2019 16in from my cold dead hands - it may not have the battery lifetime of my private 2022 M2 MBA, but at least I don't have to fight weird issues with x86 Docker images (especially anything involving a JDK runtime, i.e. Tomcat, tends to act up). And no, converting these images to ARM isn't an option, the source image doesn't come from us, and we need to reproduce the exact software environment to reproduce bugs.

And for me as a Samsung phone user, I'm pretty annoyed that I have to drag out a win10 machine every time I want to update the firmware of my phone because Odin is only available on Windows and UTM can't use Rosetta to emulate a Windows VM at any acceptable speed or stability.

I'm waiting 5 years, so about 2025. Computers got really good around 2017, and the only reason to upgrade is the heat and fan. I use remote VMs anyways, so chrome is really my limiter.

2019 16"cher here too. These are great machines just eclipsed by all the Apple silicon hype. Yes they suck comparing to performance, power use and heat to Apple silicon, they're still amazing x86 laptops compared to whatever other x86 machines are out there.

So an occasional firmware upgrade is holding you back? If you install the guest drivers, windows is superfast under UTM.

The docker thing is nonsense if you're using orbstack for example.

> So an occasional firmware upgrade is holding you back? If you install the guest drivers, windows is superfast under UTM.

The guest drivers don't work under Win7.

Intel straggler here. My laptop just completed 5 years. It says battery needs replacing which I’ve been putting off for a year. The thing is I have 32G which is quite good IMO so I’ll probably use it for two years at least.

You're just hurting yourself. Even the M1 Pro is like 3x faster than that Intel laptop. Plus so many tiny things like sleep/wake, power management, heat.. I really can't stress enough what a tectonic change the M1 was over Intel.

Depends on what they're doing with the machine. For casual use, Intel is perfectly fine and you do get some x86 benefits too. I have M1 Pro for work, personal M2 mac mini and typing this on 16" Intel MBP, watched the presentation live and still not convinced I need to upgrade my casual browsing and light programing machine this year. Battery is at 500 cycles and 84% health, still lasts 4 hours.

Exactly! I have a 2012 MBP and a 2015 MBP that are still kicking and work perfectly for my kids playing Roblox or Minecraft and any web browsing we want to do with a proper keyboard.

It really, really was. I’d been used to barely-noticeable performance gains for a decade or more. The responsiveness under load of the M1s made them feel like a decade of performance improvements overnight.

This was especially true with Apple/Intel thermal envelope, I don't know of any other manufacturer that purposefully ran their CPUs to the point of throttling just to keep fan noise down, and in such thin machines with wafer thin heatsinks for design aesthetics. I think they made the last few gens of Intel they used worse than they were (to be fair Intel did have poor TDP till recent 12th Gen)

But how will I ever survive without my touchbar?

Maybe an aftermarket keyboard? I know you're not serious but aftermarket keyboards some of them have little OLED inside the keys. Also somehow the Apple vision Pro headset might provide you with that one extra awkward step needed to accomplish a task interface that it seems like you might be humorously craving.

I've got an M1 mini already, so it's good to have the Intel MBP around in case I need that for whatever reason. Onboard USB-A is also nice to have.

I’m an Intel strangler because it’s the only way I can have Mac and Windows on the same machine. Am I the only person that really needs this? Parallels has trash performance.

You can run ARM Windows under Parallels, which is good enough for me.

Ah just updated my comment. I really dislike how slow Parallels is.

Funny, I never notice that.

For gaming sure... but anything else... hypervisors are very good these days.

I need it for windows only CNC software. It’s pretty terrible for that purpose.

Would that software perhaps work under WINE/Crossover?

Just throwing this out there: ARM Windows uses Microsoft's own ARM to x86 translation layer (like their Rosetta), which works surprisingly well for run-of-the-mill business apps and the like. 3D apps do take a big hit though.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...

Hilarious typo — I picture someone throttling an Intel machine (which sadly throttles you right back).

Ha I just noticed it!

have you tried using VMware Fusion at all?

I bought a cheap Windows crapbook just to run the two Windows-only apps that I need (terrible apps for alarm systems and photovoltaic inverters).

Apple Silicon laptops are so much better than Intel-based machines, there is really no comparison.

There are PV inverters with Windows desktop apps instead of a mobile or web app? Can I ask which one?

(Just curious; I worked in the industry on the web app side)

Parallels is an overpriced rubbish with stupid limitations. I’m switching to WMWare or VMWare as of right now

Parallels used to be front-runner with better support for new macOS features. vmWare used to lag behind with weird issues. This is why I switched from vmWare Fusion to Parallels Desktop a few years back. What are these limitations you speak of? And what makes it rubbish?

Probably the biggest complaint is fusion is now free (for personal use) and Parallels is a subscription.

Also you can get other free vm managers on Macs now since it ships with a hypervisor and vm framework.

8 GB max of RAM is a software limitation not present in the more expensive tier. I suspect it is not a technical limitation, just greed.

I got a NUC for whenever I need windows and just RDP in it. It mostly collects dust.

I'm still running Windows on my Mac mini. I used to use Bootcamp but don't do so much Windows stuff now so can get away with VMWare. After June next year I can drop Windows completely so will likely upgrade then.

I'm not sure how VMWare compares to Parallels but performance isn't as good as Bootcamp. I wouldn't want to use it all day long.

I miss Boot Camp too. (Only really used it for gaming). But the M2 is so nice that I jumped ship despite knowing I'd no longer have Windows.

For the rare times I need it, I sometimes use a cloud VM (like Shadow.tech if you need a good GPU, otherwise any Windows VM I guess).

Also, for any GPU-intensive apps (not sure if CNC counts), it might be worth giving Game Porting Toolkit (the other GPT) and Whisky (a GUI on top of that) a shot? Might run better than Parallels.

Intel straggler here ! When M1 hit I was certain I would get a M Apple in a year or two when they iron out the transition. It was just leaps and bounds ahead of others and the pricing was great.

Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough, Apple didn't keep the momentum, and they do standard Apple pricing discrimination - I think I'll take a gamble on Framework AMD version. I really like the idea behind the self-repairable upgradeable device and want to support them. If I was able to work on my Apple Intel i9 overheating PoS for past few years I'll be better off with anything, might as well support the stuff I like.

> Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough

Interesting. I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat.

Can you recommend an AMD/Intel or anything that comes close? I'd switch in a heartbeat. The closest that comes to mind is the ThinkPad X13s.

I just bought a Thinkpad T14S Gen3 after evaluating a bunch of notebooks.

Compared to my Macbook Air the Mac excels in a couple of areas which Thinkpad is lacking in. Like ambient light sensor, port quality (ie. how recessed the USB-C port is and how much strain it can take), audio output quality (Macs have powered headphone jacks for high impedance headphones) and of course speaker quality which on Macs is second to none.

The Thinkpad by comparison has poor quality speakers, no ambient light sensor so it doesn't auto adjust the screen or keyboard backlight. Its USB-C ports are also not very strong so the any strain on them or wiggle will cause them to disconnect - they certainly feel very fragile.

I hear the Thinkpad Z13/Z16 is more comparable to a Macbook but again it doesn't have little details like an ambient light sensor which seems an odd omission in a luxury laptop and price wise it's practically the same.

That said, the new AMD Ryzen 7840HS and 7940HS chips are pretty competitive with an equivalent Apple M2:

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac14-15

And GeekBench is a pretty bad benchmark.

There's also the 7945HX which is a 16 core CPU, but only comes with big dedicated GPUs, sadly.

> I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat.

Buying their products for the same reason everyone else does is "liking Apple".

You can like or use a product without liking the company making it or its practices

Your only relationship to the company is via the goods and services it sells to you. If you buy their products, you like the company and their practices. The product is the culmination of all of their practices.

"I don't like being a galley slave but if I stop rowing, they whip me"

"Rowing for the same reason everyone else rows is 'liking slavery'".

Counter-proof by reductio ad absurdum.

So you admit of being a prisoner in an ecosystem built to ruthlessly exploit you...?

I own zero Apple laptops, desktops, watches or subscriptions, and one low spec. 2016 iPhone bought second hand. That's hardly being a prisoner or being ruthlessly exploited, is it?

If you hate Disney's Frozen because you've seen it so many times, but you watch it with your daughter because she likes Frozen, does that mean you like Frozen because you're doing the same thing that people who like it are doing? No; people's motivation for the same thing can be different. People can do thing they disapprove of, for reasons other than approving of thing.

But as far as the market is concerned, if one has a choice and exercises it, they liked the product better than the alternatives. Nobody on the Apple galley was ever really forced to be there.

Even ten seconds thought should show you the problems with what you are saying. Even if you take it on aggregate, a million people buying Apple over Dell means Apple is doing something to attract money - it still doesn't necessarily mean people like Apple more, it could be that Apple are lobbying congress to require Apple for schools, or Apple offering employers a massive discount, or Dell having supply chain issues so the vote is really about availability not technical preference, or etc.

As far as the market is concerned, if prisoners like rotting food more than starving then they "like (and approve of) rotting food" in general. People understand more than just pricing signals and can see the problems with that reasoning. At least, I can. In a similar way that the playground challenge "would you rather (horrible-thing A) or (horrible-thing B)?" is hilarious because whichever you pick, it means you actually like horrible-thing, haha ha! This reasoning is "the market is a good judge of character and if it has judged you, then you must have that character". Another option is "the market works on very few signals, most of them monetary, and that makes it a poor judge of character and motivation and other higher human concepts".

Another comparison is the web adverts which reason "if you bought a lawnmower then you will want to see adverts for lawnmowers because we have strong evidence that you are interested in lawnmowers" - as we warn about markets, past performance is no guarantee of future interest in lawnmowers. It could mean you are a lawnmower enthusiast, but it could mean you are disinterested in mowers and but have a lawn and an obligation to mow it, it could mean you choose whichever is in stock at the closest store which is no vote about the product and only a vote about your local store's stock levels. It doesn't mean that if you bought a lawnmower instead of a private jet that's because you like FloorGoo lawnmower F6240h PowerMow+ with leaf-eviscerator extension more, only that you can't afford a private jet. It could mean you ran over your neighbour's lawnmower with your truck and are buying a replacement of whatever model they had. It could mean your kid wants to earn money by mowing lawns over summer and you wanted to support them by funding the mower, or that you got a job at a lawn care firm and need to buy the tools they use for yourself, it could mean you took advice on which mower to buy from a friend and don't have any personal knowledge of mowers, or that a shop had a sale, or that a shop had an attractive smooth talking lawnmower salesperson, or that you had a breakdown and need to finish mowing before the rain due at the end of the day and had no time to do any research or like/dislike anything, or that you are supporting a mow-for-charity drive for a group going to mow churchyards and you are just buying within the budget that the volunteers donated, or that you aren't technical and misunderstood that you need an Apple lawnmower for your bank app because they advertised and told you that you did because companies employ highly skilled professional manipulators working full time to frame and distort the truth and your access to information in their favour...

You might also argue that if I want a silent laptop with long battery life that is a "proper *nix" and not a limited WinRT/ChromeOS/Android then I don't have a choice and am therefore not exercising a proper informed choice so the signal from it is misleading.

True. eg "For my last project, I used JavaScript, in anger."

I use my laptop as a portable workstation so I rarely use built in keyboard, touchpad, battery, etc. From what I see AMD 7840 CPUs deliver similar performance to M2.

I think I'll get an Framework 16 or 13 with AMD in a few months, will make sure Linux drivers are in order before ordering.

I have a 12th gen Framework 13", 13" M1 Air, and a 15" M2 Air.

I use the Framework laptop for work because I need to use Linux.

The Framework laptop is mediocre just like pretty much all PC laptops. The hinges are awful, if you pick up the laptop upright, about 50% of the time the screen falls flat 180 degrees.

The trackpad is arse in Linux.

If you're lucky you can probably get 5 hours battery life, but on a realistic workload you're looking at 2-3 hours.

The keyboard is pretty nice, but I wish ctrl/fn is swapped like Apple and it has the inverted mini-T keyboard arrows (or at least I wish someone would make a swappable keyboard for the Framework).

The speakers are bloody awful.

Display/Webcam/Mic are fine.

I would like more ports over modular ports, but I appreciate the design that went into the modular ports.

Speaking of modular ports, sometimes they abruptly stop working and require removing and reseating.

All these small nits really add up and it just feels like a mediocre experience. It is my work laptop, but I try my best to avoid using it over my PC with WSL2 or either Air laptop, but I try my best not to mix work and personal.

Both the 13" M1 Air and 15" M2 Air are just amazing compared to the Framework, and I suspect PC laptops in general. They have their drawbacks, price (gouging in some ways), less ports, can't drive dual displays, but their trackpad, finish, speakers, etc. are just amazing. I personally prefer MacOS to Linux for a desktop experience as well.

Thing is I use integrated keyboard/trackpad maybe a few times a week in conference rooms, same for battery - 5 hours is plenty for presentations and meetings.

I want a portable workstation that I can occasionally use as a laptop, so build quality and laptop stuff isn't that big of a deal to me. I'm always using a screen via USBC + dedicated keyboard and mouse. Performance and noise are a factor - I'm hoping that AMD versions deliver on that.

I'm leaning towards framework because if my current MBP dies I can't do anything about it since it's been out of warenty for years. And upgrading it eventually with next gen CPU without having to change storage/RAM, etc. sounds nice.

This is where I am. I have several PCs, a 15" Intel MBP, a 16" M2 Max MBP, an M2 MBA, and a 14" M1 Pro MBP. If I didn't have to use the PCs, I wouldn't because of how good the Macs have been for me. My team and I do a combination of web/app development, media production, and 2D/3D graphics. While we won't be replacing our PC towers anytime soon, our laptops are going to be Macs going forward with the exception of testing on the PCs we have. I can run Autodesk Fusion 360 and Blender on my MBA well enough that it makes no sense for us to force ourselves onto the more mediocre experience.

The big thing I like about the M's is how quiet they are. I hate fan whirr in my old age.

Wasn't AMD pretty much right behind in single thread perf and a bit behind in peak perf TPU, but always ahead in multi-core perf options?

I'm very happy with my Ryzen 7 6800U.

Matte screen? Check.

Lots of full perf cores? Check.

USB A and C? Check.

Really good battery even though I'm plugged in all the time? Check.

X86-64? Check.

I still know a number of my colleagues who haven't jumped onto the Apple Silicon machines despite our 2019 Intel machines being out of warranty (and thus eligible for replacement) for two years now

I'm still using a 2015 macbook for my personal daily driver. I have to plug it in regularly, but otherwise it works just fine for everything except video editing.

Any reason for not upgrading?

>it works just fine for everything except video editing

would be my guess

Fiscal prudence?

To me, "personal daily driver" sounds like where you'd do online banking. A MacBook from 2015 can't run any OS newer than Big Sur, which is EOL right about now. And it sounds really imprudent to do online banking from an insecure device.

My 2015 MBP is supported in macOS Monterey.

The "Pro" makes a difference there. The Air and Pro from 2015 both got Monterey, but the regular MacBook from the same year didn't.

It should still be able to run an up to date web browser though, right?

If one is that concerned about someone exploiting an OS level security flaw to exfiltrate their online banking credentials (wildly unlikely), they should just be doing that stuff in a VM or similarly isolated environment anyways.

> It should still be able to run an up to date web browser though, right?

For a while, yes, but the browser being up-to-date doesn't make an EOL OS safe to expose to the Internet.

> If one is that concerned about someone exploiting an OS level security flaw to exfiltrate their online banking credentials (wildly unlikely), they should just be doing that stuff in a VM or similarly isolated environment anyways.

Just doing sensitive stuff in a VM isn't good protection at all, since a malicious host can trivially compromise the guest.

Many US bank websites have so few features I'm not even sure what hacking mine could get someone. They can transfer from my checking to my savings account?

I assure you, I take security quite seriously. The version of MacOS I'm using is nowhere near the top security risk.

> A MacBook from 2015 can't run any OS newer than Big Sur

It can, Ubuntu runs just fine on it

You're right, I should have been more precise. But you still won't get security updates to firmware anymore that way.

If this is your personal threat model, I commend you on an exciting life well-lived that appears to entail sophisticated personal protection of the GPG keys and Bitcoin you need to run your business empire securely.

It can run the latest OS with the open core project

The problem from another angle: I wouldn't trust anything made in the last decade for my airgap box.

> Any reason for not upgrading?

Why is this sort of question always framed as if people have to provide a justification for not buying a new model, as if spending money on the new shiny without any reason is normal or desirable?

We live in a day and age where hardware bought a decade ago still packs enough punch to run most of today's software without any hiccup. Why would anyone waste their cash to replace something that works without having any compelling reason?

Because the productivity gains from upgrading can be quite large relative to the cost of upgrading, esp when you factor in the average salary in this community.

I spend 8-10 hours on my Macbook every day. The amount of time I've saved / productivity I've gained by things just running faster and by being more mobile (much longer battery life) is huge compared to the $2000 price tag.

Frugality is good but there are some things in life (depending on your personal circumstances) where it does in fact make sense to upgrade for clear benefits.

Really depends on what you're doing.

I spend 8-10 hours a day coding on my 2018 MBP (web apps - Postgres and Rails or Python) but almost none of that is really CPU-bound in my case. The meat of my work, the actual coding and iteration, is not limited by the aging CPU.

The one thing that's painfully slow is rebuilding Docker images, but we don't do that too often. Less than once per week.

I actually am upgrading soon, but it is not going to make an amazing difference for me in terms of productivity in my current work.

> Because the productivity gains from upgrading can be quite large relative to the cost of upgrading, esp when you factor in the average salary in this community.

You see, this is simply not true. At all. By far.

I have a cheap Intel laptop released 8-10 years ago. It shipped with 8GB of RAM and 4 cores. I bought it on a clearance sale for around $500. I use it still to this day to work on webapps, including launching half a dozen services with Docker Compose. The only time I experience any type of slowdown is when I launch IntelliJ.

I also have new kit, including a M2 MacBook.

There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop. Nothing. The only issue I have with my old laptop is battery life, and that's just because I don't bother replacing it.

Please do point out a single concrete example of "productivity gains" that I would get by spending $2k on a new laptop.

I love responses like this, we should think hard first why NOT to upgrade, instead of doing reverse.

The only downside would be struggling with 8GB, which should be upgradable just as well. 10y old would have a cd/dvd tray - that can be replaced by an SSD for 4TB of goodliness (SATA but still good enough).

My spouse has a 12y old laptop that has had pretty much everything (but the soldered GPU) upgraded - CPU, memory, HDD->SSD, CD-SSD, WiFi (to support 5GHz), keyboard (replaced), fan & heatsink, battery (replaced, might rebuild one w/ LG's 18650 MJ1). Unfortunately pre-Sandy Bridge memory is capped at 8GB, so it shows its age - still an amazing thing.

Why do you have an M2 Macbook?

> There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop. Nothing.

[…]

> The only time I experience any type of slowdown is when I launch IntelliJ.

I can't tell if you're a serially dishonest interlocutor, or whether your fetish for making very emphatic generalisations with lots of intensifiers makes you seem like one, but once again this is very weak reasoning. You have yourself pointed out something you cannot do with your Intel laptop which you could with an upgrade.

> Please do point out a single concrete example of "productivity gains" that I would get by spending $2k on a new laptop.

You can run IntelliJ smoothly and have no battery life issues. (Literally from your own post… it's just so sad to see this utter lack of self awareness.)

Because hardware vendors don't provide security updates forever, and they refuse to open-source enough of their code that other people can do it for them.

I'm rocking a 2017 MacBook Air and it's great--really the only down side is that Apple stopped supporting it in macOS past Monterey. Almost all of my past and present Apple hardware has long outlasted software support, which is my biggest complaint with the company.

It is an honest question.

For some background in my thinking, it is because today's announcement really focused on Intel users. My semi-educated guess is that Apple did a whole bunch of user studies and realized there are a lot of people out there, like the OP, who haven't upgraded yet, hence the focus. As a result, I'm genuinely curious why this person hasn't upgraded.

And for my own personal experience, the upgrade/switch from intel to m*, is night and day better ergonomics as a developer. It isn't just some shiny new toy or a waste in cash. For the same reason professional mechanics in F1 don't use shitty tools to work on their cars. Or tour de france racers aren't using 30lbs Huffy bikes.

TLDR: I don't give a f'ck if you don't happen to upgrade, that's your choice. I'm just curious about why.

This isn't Huffy bikes vs F1 racers. Unless your workload is heavily CPU bound. And even then it's probably more like a 20yo F1 car vs a new one.

We also live on a finite planet. And then energy savings for many desk jockeys is unlikely to be worth it for a few decades more, if one considers the literal tons of material and energy in manufacturing.

That's totally not my experience at all.

> And even then it's probably more like a 20yo F1 car vs a new one.

This thread is literally about the decision to buy an M3-based MacBook Pro to replace M2/M1/Intel MacBook Pros. We're talking about hardware launched in the past 4/3/2/1 years.

That's hardly "20yo" anything.

Also, you failed to provide any concrete, objective reason to buy a M3. None at all. Is it that hard to put together any argument to justify the move?

> That's hardly "20yo" anything.

My car comparison was trying to propose an alternative metaphor since comparing a top-of-the-line racing car to a child's bicycle struck me as absurdly out of proportion. Cars are generally maintained and kept in service longer than computers, so I picked 20y out of thin air.

> Also, you failed to provide any concrete, objective reason to buy a M3. None at all. Is it that hard to put together any argument to justify the move?

My point is for most people there is no justification to move. Unless one has a device beyond repair, so old its software cannot be kept up-to-date, or the very rare need for the latest performance then stick with what you have.

> My semi-educated guess is that Apple did a whole bunch of user studies and realized there are a lot of people out there

Apple has telemetry from macOS. So they knew exactly what percentage of users are still on Intel Macs.

And it's low-hanging fruit to go after them then try and convince existing Windows users.

Telemetry doesn't answer the important "why" question.

    For the same reason professional mechanics in F1 
    don't use shitty tools to work on their cars.

They also probably don't buy new wrenches every time new wrenches are released, if their current wrenches are completely sufficient and not holding them back in any way.

> if their current wrenches are completely sufficient

That's a fantastically entirely subjective opinion.

> That's a fantastically entirely subjective opinion.

That's the point: objectively, there is absolutely no concrete reason that justifies replacing a MacBook bought in the past 3 or 4 years with the M3 ones. None at all.

In fact, it boggles the mind how anyone could justify replacing any MacBook pro with a M3 one by claiming "pros don't use shitty tools", as if MacBook Pros packing an Intel core 7/M1/M2 suddenly became shitty laptops just because Apple released a new one.

> That's the point: objectively, there is absolutely no concrete reason that justifies replacing a MacBook bought in the past 3 or 4 years with the M3 ones. None at all.

Again, what you mean to say is that _you_ cannot think of a reason that would make _you_ upgrade from a 4 year old MacBook to a new M3 one.

> objectively

Do you understand that what you say is literally, definitionally, subjective? It's one thing to make primitive and clumsy generalisations, but quite another to be confusing subjectivity and objectivity.

> it boggles the mind

Starting to believe there isn't a lot of mind to boggle here…

> how anyone could justify replacing any MacBook pro with a M3 one by claiming "pros don't use shitty tools"

I haven't noticed anyone making this argument, but I know many people who upgrade their tools -- whether computers or otherwise -- to the latest and greatest whenever they can, because working faster and more efficiently is a concrete benefit, and it really would take an inestimable moron to, say, argue that late Intel-era MacBooks can do the same things that M-series MacBooks can.

    I haven't noticed anyone making this argument

Yeah, you haven't read this thread.

Not that you missed anything of value. A previous poster, latchkey, quite literally made that argument:

    "the upgrade/switch from intel to m*, is night and day 
    better ergonomics as a developer. It isn't just some 
    shiny new toy or a waste in cash. For the same reason 
    professional mechanics in F1 don't use shitty tools 
    to work on their cars. Or tour de france racers aren't 
    using 30lbs Huffy bikes"

As to this assertion:

    it really would take an inestimable moron to, say, 
    argue that late Intel-era MacBooks can do the same
    things that M-series MacBooks can. 

In terms of raw performance and power efficiency, obviously the Apple Silicon laptops trounce the Intel-based Mac laptops.

But if you spend some time learning about our industry you'll realize that not all development workflows are identical, and not all have the same bottlenecks, and for many tasks an Intel-powered Mac is not a bottleneck. Surely you can understand that, or aspire to understand that.

I would certainly agree with a more generalized and reality-based version of what you and the other poster seem to be attempting to say: If your current hardware is bottlenecking you in any way, you should most definitely address that if at all possible. A hardware upgrade that unbottlenecks you and improves your developer ergonomics will almost certainly pay for itself in the long run. That is sane and profitable advice and something I've always done.

Thanks, I had missed that. It contains the phrase "don't use shitty tools", but I'll leave it to you to decide whether OP honestly recapitulated the same argument in their passing reference. The two seem somewhat different to me.

> As to this laughable claim […]

This is a response to a specific point which rewmie has made several times. They seem to genuinely believe there is literally no difference between M-series and Intel chips:

> There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop. Nothing.

> there is absolutely no concrete reason that justifies replacing a MacBook bought in the past 3 or 4 years with the M3 ones. None at all.

> it boggles the mind how anyone could justify replacing any MacBook pro with a M3 one by claiming "pros don't use shitty tools", as if MacBook Pros packing an Intel core 7/M1/M2 suddenly became shitty laptops just because Apple released a new one

I likely disagree with your position, and believe you have made some bad faith arguments, but you're at least compos mentis.

     "There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 
     laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop"

Well, I took that one in good faith and interpreted it to mean that the old Intel laptop was perfectly adequate for their personal needs.

The alternative interpretation, that they believed there was no objective difference in capability between Intel and Apple Silicon laptops, was so absurd I couldn't imagine anybody expressing it or believing it. I think I made the correct interpretation but it was definitely an extrapolation on my part and definitely fits the HN guideline of "assume best intentions."

To be clear, the Apple Silicon laptops certainly trounce the Intel MBPs and I think most developers will find them well worth the upgrade for most things -- I just didn't like the assertion that anybody still using an Intel Mac was equivalent to somebody riding the Tour de France in a Huffy.

> I took that one in good faith

I tried to, but found it hard given that OP also challenged people to provide "concrete reasons" to upgrade, and said things like "there is absolutely no reason". Everything OP says indicates to me that they actually meant this as evidence for their generalisation.

> The alternative interpretation, that they believed there was no objective difference in capability between Intel and Apple Silicon laptops, was so absurd I couldn't imagine anybody expressing it or believing it.

I agree it's a head scratcher… and yet here it is, before our very eyes, time and time again. I even recapitulated the argument in more reasonable terms ("I think what you meant to say is…"), but they seem resolute in their belief that there are no reasons to upgrade from a "late 2010s" MacBook to a new one.

> I just didn't like the assertion that anybody still using an Intel Mac was equivalent to somebody riding the Tour de France in a Huffy.

Heh, yeah that gave me pause too. I actually think that the example of the F1 mechanic slices the other way entirely: I can't imagine an F1 mechanic not taking an interest in the latest marginally improved wrench, given the narrow margins by which they succeed or fail in competition against other teams, and other mechanics.

You are right that many Intel machines are still highly capable. One could buy an Intel Mac Pro until earlier this year, for example.

But the trigger for Mr/Mrs/Mx "No difference between Intel Macs and the M-series" was another commenter benignly asking someone why they hadn't upgraded ("Any reason for not upgrading?") from a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro.

I said this elsewhere, but it seems like a fair question to ask someone on a computer/programming forum, particularly when the machine in question is close to EOL and has been blown away by a new technology. Don't get me wrong, if this was someone using a 2006 Core Duo in 2012, I'd think it was much of muchness, but the M-series does change things somewhat.

Replying to this one since I think we reached max nesting. Regarding as to why somebody might not be in a hurry to upgrade a 2015 Mac to an M2:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m2_8_gpu-vs-...

To put it in fully objective terms, a lot of development tasks (for many people) are still dominated by single-core performance.

The M2 has roughly 2x single-core performance, which is going to be absolutely awesome if you're spending a lot of time waiting for the CPU. But if that's not really a bottleneck, and the things you do are already completing at a speed that doesn't disrupt your flow state or otherwise consume significant amounts of your day.

I'm working (on my 2018 MBP) on some Python software that does science stuff. The single core perf delta between my CPU and the M2 is even smaller for a lot of tasks, more like 50% instead of 100%. And I'm not doing anything that would really benefit from more than 6 cores.

I'm currently planning an upgrade, but it's just not a pressing need as $2K-$3K is a significant investment for me at the moment.

There is no daylight between us on any of these points.

My position is not that there aren't good reasons to have not upgraded from a 2015 Mac, or that I'm having trouble imagining what they are, but rather that it's a reasonable question to ask of someone in this specific forum.

> OP was not trying to pass an exam about the specific details of how F1 teams operate.

They were extending the analogy to make a counter point. That's a good faith thing to do.

Very true and sorry if it seemed that I was criticizing them for doing it.

I believe that OP's intention was to suggest that professionals who work in fields with high demands for performance, like professionals who are passionate about their work, are likely to invest in new and improved ways of accomplishing their work, even if it's only a marginal gain. (e.g. the marginal gain of moving from Spotlight to Raycast was worth it for me).

Discussing cost controls in Formula 1 moves us further away (IMO) from that universal truth they were trying to cast a light on.

You... don't think that mechanics on a racing team are qualified to know if their current wrenches are sufficient?

I suspect that OP thinks, as I did, that you've constructed an inane straw man.

User latchkey, the one you're agreeing with, is the one who very literally claimed that a developer using an Intel laptop is quite equivalent to an F1 mechanic using "shitty tools" or racing the Tour de France in a 30lb Huffy.

I'm not agreeing with latchkey's statement about developers and "shitty tools". I'm agreeing with them that when you say this…

> if their current wrenches are completely sufficient

… you are not making an honest argument, because it is entirely subjective as to whether their current wrenches are "completely sufficient".

The dog I have in this fight is not upgrade cycles or Intel vs. M1, it's "argue the fucking point without descending into high school rhetoric and logical fallacies".

A wrench has a finite set of objective qualities. Grip, length, strength, weight and maybe some special-case properties like being non-magnetic or spark resistant.

It's surprising to me that you think that cutting-edge racing mechanics don't have objective criteria for these things and that it's all some sort of subjective dark art. But it's a bad analogy to begin with and it's not my analogy.

I totally agree it's a bad analogy, and whether I succeed in defending it or you succeed in knocking it down, it doesn't really help us understand each other in greater fidelity.

The one thing I do admire about the person who offered it is that they are at least trying to persuade by offering different lenses through which to interpret their perspective, instead of repeatedly shouting THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO UPGRADE LMAO.

> The one thing I do admire about the person who offered it is that they are at least trying to persuade by offering different lenses through which to interpret their perspective, instead of repeatedly shouting THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO UPGRADE LMAO.

That nails it on the head.

Sorry you're being downvoted for pointing out specious arguments.

The honest reason is that there is no practical reason to upgrade. The computer works, and despite the various FUD you might read, the attack surface for external attacks is quite small for personal computers.

That said, if anyone would like to send me $4000, I will absolutely upgrade to a new 14" Macbook in a heartbeat.

> better ergonomics

The newer 16 inch MacBook Pros are half a pound heavier than the Intel one.

I'm weird, I sit on the floor on a cushion with my back against a wall. I have a folding table over my lap that the laptop sits on. The keyboard actually works unlike my old Intel ones with the crappy butterfly. I hardly travel these days, but throwing it in a backpack isn't the end of the world.

That said, I was actually thinking ergonomics in terms of performance of development. The thing is so fast that commands complete faster than I can deal with them. My IDE can keep up with me. I can run a ton of apps and it doesn't slow down or glitch. It doesn't get nearly as hot and there is rarely fan noise. The screen is higher quality. The speakers sound better. Magsafe is back! The button for my fingerprint works very well. No more stupid touch bar. Function keys!

I could keep going...

I've been holding off on upgrading some older Intel Mac minis I have while waiting for the memory situation to improve, but so far it hasn't.

Ideally, I'd consolidate these older systems into one new Mac mini, or even a Mac Studio.

I'd like at least 64 GB of memory, at a reasonable price.

The latest Mac mini maxes out at only 32 GB of RAM, if I'm remembering it right.

I think the latest low-end Mac Studio could be upgraded to 64 GB of memory, but the last time I priced it, this upgrade cost more than I'd been expecting. It also put the overall cost above what I'd prefer to pay.

While I'd like to keep using a Mac, it's looking more and more like I'd be better off just building a PC, where I could likely get comparable enough processing performance, but far more memory (and storage) at a lower cost.

Because capitalism, that’s why. Capitalists have convinced people it is a moral imperative to continue to spend constantly.

The mode of production doesn't affect the fact that you have to do production. If nobody's continually demanding laptops from the laptop maker, they will stop making laptops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift

If people don't need new laptops because their current ones already do everything they need, then reducing laptop production is good. Fewer resources and less pollution spent on things people don't need.

Not if it meant there are none when they do need a replacement.

Similarly, buying cheap used cars only works because someone else bought them new.

I am sure that 16yo girl buying an iPhone is thoughtfully postulating about the juxtaposition of morality and capitalism.

And not because it's shiny, fun and lets her socialise with her friends.

> thoughtfully postulating about the juxtaposition of morality and capitalism

I don't know how you managed to read the comment you responded to as suggesting that.

> sir this is a wendy's

Some people have experienced downsides you might want to know about.

For example as you passed 2016-2019, not only did you have the butterfly keyboard mess but each generation reportedly got hotter and thus louder.

My 2015 was quieter/cooler than my 2019.

So if you’re happy it may turn out that even though the newer machine has better performance it feels like a downgrade for other reasons.

(I don’t think that’s the case here)

2019 16" no longer used the butterfly keyboard, they have a physical Esc key and something Apple called "magic keyboard", really a scissor based mechanism that's really pleasant to type on and doesn't stop working with a tiny bit of dust under the cap.

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/butterfly-keyboard-vs-scisso...

The new magic keyboard or new scissor keyboard has a key travel of 1mm, for me I wouldn't describe it as really pleasant.

2019 MBP mostly fixed the issues introduced in 2016. But lack of USB and HDMI was enough for me to pass on it. Also, the 2015 one is prettier.

Ah I miss the lit up Apple logo.

Yeah I would definitely miss that, as well as the shape.

It would depend on workload. On my old intel MacBook, I was looking at an hour or so to build, and it could only complete one build on the battery if that. Testing took a similarly absurd amount of time.

The M1 dropped both times by in the region of 30 minutes, could do multiple rounds on a single charge and didn't make a tonne of noise while doing so.

The amount of time savings you get from the improved CPU perf is quantifiable, and you can assign a monetary amount to that time.

Now if your use case is not performance (cpu, battery, etc) limited then of course there's no reason to upgrade, ever really, but that would apply to any laptop or pc not just Macs.

> Why is this sort of question always framed as […]

OP didn't frame it any way at all as far as I can tell, but either way it seems like an entirely reasonable question to ask of someone on a forum which is largely comprised of computer and programming enthusiasts who has not upgraded their daily driver for nearly a decade.

> as if spending money on the new shiny without any reason is normal or desirable?

Every single person who spends their money on "the new shiny" has a reason. You may not find the reason edifying, but that's irrelevant to your stated argument.

> Why would anyone waste their cash to replace something that works without having any compelling reason?

As you were doubtless aware when you specifically constructed a straw man argument predicated on an entirely false premise and laden with your own subjective judgements about "waste" and things that "work" and "compelling" reasons, nobody does this.

I suspect what you really mean is that you believe people upgrade their machines without what _you_ consider to be a good reason. You think people are too quick to upgrade when their machine isn't the very latest, or when it's got a dent, or when it's slowing down a little.

If you'd written what you really believe -- that people should not upgrade as rapidly as they do -- you'd probably have pulled on the thread for a further 0.02s and realised that everyone has different values and priorities, and you likely "waste money" in others' eyes across multiple line items of your annual budget. So it's terrific luck, really, that the internet's various competing interpretations of a "compelling reason" can't stop you from spending your money however you'd like.

> (..) it seems like an entirely reasonable question to ask of someone on a forum which is largely comprised of computer and programming enthusiasts who has not upgraded their daily driver for nearly a decade.

Are professionals expected to mindlessly throw money around at the new shiny without having absolutely no compelling reason to do so?

I think my post was rather straight-forward: people buy things only when they feel there is a clear upside to it. If you made that purchase 2 or 3 or 4 years ago, you need a very good reason to just throw it away and buy a new replacement. You need to at least make a valid case for it, otherwise you are just wasting your hard-earned money for nothing at all.

> Every single person who spends their money on "the new shiny" has a reason.

Why was OP framing that question on whether no reason was needed then, and instead people had to justify why weren't they wasting their money on the new shiny? Why is being new and shiny such a strong rationale that the onus of not buying is placed on not buying?

These are simple questions. In fact, all it would take is provide a single compelling reason why it would be a good idea to waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro when you already own a M2/M1 Macbook Pro, or even a late 2010s Macbook Pro. Hell, why on earth would you even waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro if you already have a M2 Macbook Air?

If you cannot answer this question, why would it be anything than absolutely foolish to pretend that people should justify not buying a M3?

> Are professionals expected to mindlessly throw money around at the new shiny without having absolutely no compelling reason to do so?

Once again you're loading an incredibly tawdry straw man argument here with your own inane value judgements. The only difference is that this time you've undermined your argument with a typo: it's otherwise as self-evidently vacuous as your original comment.

Just look at this epistemological nightmare you enumerated with apparent sincerity:

> why on earth would you even waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro if you already have a M2 Macbook Air? If you cannot answer this question, why would it be anything than absolutely foolish to pretend that people should justify not buying a M3?

Putting aside haplography (I guess if your argument is just begging the question a dozen times it gets hard to write coherently), it seems that you're literally incapable of considering that other people have fundamentally different values and priorities to you.

Read this sentence you wrote:

> In fact, all it would take is provide a single compelling reason why it would be a good idea to waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro when you already own a M2/M1 Macbook Pro, or even a late 2010s Macbook Pro

It is axiomatic that there can be no "compelling reason why it would be a good idea [sic]" to "waste" money on an M3 MacBook Pro. It's a waste of money, so there cannot be a good reason. What you presumably intend to write is: "I cannot think of a single compelling reason for a person to upgrade to an M3 MacBook Pro if they already own an M2, M1, or late-2010s MacBook Pro."

And that's it. You can't think of a reason. People in this thread have given you both examples of reasons to upgrade, and clear-eyed explanations of why your inability to suspend your disbelief in this area is not the incisive general argument you think it is.

Much of the work I personally do will be made significantly faster by upgrading from the M1 to the M3 Max, which I will upgrade to. I upgraded to the M1 from an Intel Core i9.

You might think that this is a compelling reason -- wanting one's work to be faster and more efficient. You might not. It doesn't matter. It's a good enough reason for me to upgrade, and that's the rub. Everyone has a reason to upgrade, you just disagree with how compelling those reasons are. And again, the great news for everyone else is that your handwringing serves only to make you seem enormously judgemental and narrow-minded. You remain free to spend your money as you wish.

They mentioned their coworker and most companies have upgrade policies. Just fill in a form every x years and you get a shiny new laptop (and depending on where you work, you’ll get to keep your old one as a gift)

> They mentioned their coworker and most companies have upgrade policies.

Upgrade policies aren't driven by new requirements, or performance improvements. Some companies have mandatory hardware replacement policies which mostly serve to allow their tech support staff to standardized on a small number of devices. Getting a M3 MacBook Pro replacement just because your employer doesn't want to maintain an Intel MacBook Pro is hardly indicative that a M3 is worth spending money on, let alone replace a M2 or even M1 MacBook Pro.

x86-64 docker containers?

https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/384 is still open. :(

I don't know exactly why this bug would still be open, but you can use x86-64 images on an ARM64 Mac :

https://docs.docker.com/desktop/release-notes/#4250

I have been using it for a few months (in beta) and it works great !

Ah, just out of beta a few days ago. I'll try it out!

Not OP, but

The new Magic Keyboard ( or Scissor 2.0 ) just doesn't suites me. 1.0mm Key travel is so so much worse than the 1.3/1.5mm old scissors on my 2015 MBP.

I actually dont need the seamless, ultra large trackpad. Which gets false positive from time to time. This has never been the case on a sane trackpad size.

My Workload is memory limited, and rarely CPU limited. Upgrading wouldn't bring a lot of benefits unless I have more memory, and Memory upgrade is expensive.

Did I mention keyboard or trackpad?

I just had a battery swap on this MBP earlier this year, hopefully it will last another 4 - 5 years or whenever I cant update Safari. Although I guess I could still use Firefox.

I thought the same, but ended up upgrading to an M1 Air due to a hardware failure.

Sure it feels 100x faster. But more than that it’s DEAD SILENT (no fan in the machine!) and completely cool.

The temperature/noise, if I had experienced it myself first, would have probably gotten me to upgrade.

I use a 2019 Intel MBP at work. It’s much faster than my old 2015 too, but with the additional heat and noise I didn’t really want one.

I would have taken the noise/heat of the M1 + 2018 or 2019 performance. Instead I got heat/noise of the M1 and far better performance, for a fraction of what my 2015 cost (unadjusted) new.

Amazing upgrade.

I got an M2 Pro Mini a couple of weeks ago to replace my 2018 i7 MBP and while it is obviously snappier and you feel it's more powerful without running benchmarks the main difference is that: it is silent. I only got it warm to the touch rendering video with Da Vinci, when CPU temp usage quickly went to 75ºC.

Are you able to replace the battery on those? I have done battery replacements on 2017 model Macbook Airs to great success. I get the batteries from OWC.

I was more surprised not to see any AI-specific benchmarks—sure, the most popular open-source models are from avowed competitors, but there should have been a way to define a re-training task that would be relevant for the wave of ML programmers.

It won’t excel at this. It is a mobile GPU and won’t be able to put up remotely similar numbers to a desktop GPU with massive amounts of power and cooling.

They didn't improve the neural engine. M3's NPU is half the speed of the A17 Pro in iPhone 15 Pro.

I had the same thought. It seems like the improvements there weren't worth talking about.

AFAICT, the biggest benefit is just the unified memory model at this point.

For years now, Apple's biggest competitor is Apple from five years ago. One of their biggest threats is that sales flatline because people are still using their perfectly good laptops and phones from several years ago. And that's a hard problem to deal with when you advertise your products as high-end goods that will last a long time.

This shouldn't be a problem, and the answer is to refresh devices less frequently.

It objectively is a problem for Apple as a corporation though, as they are expected by their shareholders to to continue to grow and increase profits year over year.

Only in a modern capitalist society etc etc. One thing Apple diversified in in the past years is its non-hardware offering; iCloud earns them billions and Apple TV is churning out massive productions, a 3.5 hour Scorsese flick in cinemas for example.

The whole company is sized to a specific revenue stream, and this revenue stream requires a specific sales volume. Apple could get off Mr. Bones' wild ride, but this would require remaking how the whole company works:

- less frequent laptop releases mean lower sales (do you want this 2020 Mac or this 2023 Dell?)

- lower sales mean lower revenue, lower revenue means lower costs

- so now Apple has to spend less on R&D and at the same time convince its board of directors that lower sales don't mean Apple is failing

[delayed]

They have solved this though by periodically introducing incompatible macOS updates, so that eventually you can no longer install the current macOS and then after a while you won't be able to install latest version of applications and you start to feel stronger need to upgrade...

Six year OS support, plus security updates past that.

Not as good as Windows support but still good enough.

I have family still using the 2017 Macbook Airs, happily. A year ago I replaced the battery on two of them (from OWC which still offers high quality ones). Every year I ask them if they want to upgrade to a new model Macbook and they refuse. Meanwhile I have other family on Chromebooks that they've had to replace twice already because they are too slow, or the hinges on the screen have worn out, or the charging port got too annoyingly loose.

Out of curiosity, how much RAM do you have on your MacBook to run containers?

How much RAM do you want to give the containers on your MacBook?

I'm being facetious, but it's an unanswerable question.

However much you set on the slider, so not quite so unanswerable.

I mean the person I replied to asked the unanswerable question. How can we say how much memory they need in their computer 'for containers' without knowing where they want to set those sliders (and how many of them there are), and then it's not really worth asking, or it would be a question about runtime overhead or something.

I think this is squarely aimed at people who are holding onto their Intel-based Macs with an iron grip. There are always people out there that don't ever want to move to another architecture. I saw it going from Motorola 68030s to PowerPC. I saw people not wanting to upgrade from PowerPC to Intel. Now we're still seeing the people who don't want to migrate to Apple Silicon. They may have legit reasons and what-not. But time is ticking.

So I think it's mostly aimed at the Intel hold-overs.

Nobody has to upgrade. m68030 Macs still worked after the PowerPC transition. I used my Mac mini G4 for years after the Intel transition, and still use both an m68030 Mac and that G4 mini with NetBSD now.

Currently I'm running Sonoma on a 2010 MacBook Pro. I'd love an ARM-based Mac, but can't afford one yet. I'd have to disagree about the idea that "time is ticking"...

True. But I was just offering a possible reason why Apple was hitting that comparison so hard in the presentation.

Intel ride or die here. My 2019 i9 mbp is trucking along still - and this time of year the heat helps keep the room hospitable.

Was looking towards M3 for a big leap, but apart from heat and power (I use my MBP plugged in 95% of the time) there still isn't that compelling a reason to deal with some of the issues (thunderbolt / multiple displays) for my use case.

At 4 grand (sterling!) for comparable spec to my intel mbp, I just can't bring myself to take a plunge.

A container that is idle and do not serve any request only really as memory in its footprint. There is no reason having tens or hundreds of processes not occupying cpu and i/o time would affect battery life in a significant manner.

Bro and where do you think the containers and scheduler run? There is a whole linux underneath running all the time

Only one kernel and scheduler for all the containers, that doesn't have a lot to do if most of the processes are idle.

And I am not your bro.

Your whole argument is containers will not occupy CPU or I/O. Which is not true, you’re running a full fledged VM, not just a kernel.

And presumably the person running k8s is probably not running them to have them idle. They are technically knowledgeable enough to be aware how much resources do they consume, and be excited for such comparison.

A linux VM with only a kubernetes/docker with most workloads idling doesn't use a lot of resources, except memory, probably less than the typical open browser tab full of unoptimized js.

When you have kubernetes on your laptop, that is to test your code alongside a set of other microservices functionnally representative of a prod deployment. That doesn't mean your containers will have much load appart from your own punctual testing.

In case you are not already using orbstack, that might give you even more battery life (not affiliated, just a fan).

The comparison with M2 is not very useful at this point. Throughout the presentation, the gains were something like 15-20% in some areas.

Even if they do their own chips, Apple cannot achieve a revolutionary performance gain year over year, that's why between two generations we'll see something like this for a long time. And since their idea is for people to be using Macs for many years, it makes sense to compare it to older generations to try and persuade people to do the upgrade.

It shows the comparison right on the chart, what else you need? But you should get m3 most times if you want to use it for the longest period.