"Buy the new M3, a small incremental improvement on the M1/M2" would probably get a lot of people fired as a marketing campaign.
While I agree with you, we live in a reality where hype, hyperbole, misleading, and intentionally manipulative information is accepted and common place for selling things. It sure would be nice to look at a product or service and get a clear comparison without having to read between the lines, pick out subtle vague language usage, and keep up with the latest propaganda techniques but alas, it's everywhere.
On the bright side it should teach everyone you shouldn't trust the majority of information at face value, which is a useful skill in life. On the downside we continuously erode trust in one another and I worry it's wearing on social structures and relationships everywhere as more people see and mimic these behaviors everywhere for everything.
Slight tangent - even though the MBP has been struggling to handle my dev work (partly because the codebase I'm working on has grown significantly in the last two years) I won't be upgrading. Work bought me a MacStudio (M2 Max), which mainly runs headlessly on my desk (also running Homebridge and plugged into my big speakers for AirPlay). This means I'm keeping the MBP as my portable machine (using VSCode's remote extensions and/or CodeServer to do dev work from wherever). I also have a late-2015 27" iMac at the office (with OpenCore Legacy Patcher so it can run whatever the latest macOS is called nowadays). This also works perfectly well now all the hard stuff is done on the MacStudio - and the screen is still lovely. (My previous 27" iMac was in active service for 10 years, although it was almost unusable towards the end).
Another tangent - I bet that's why they're not doing the larger "pro" iMacs. If it weren't for VSCode Remote Extensions and OCLP, I would have ended up with a beautiful monitor that was essentially useless (as was my original 27" iMac). People who need that extra power should probably avoid all-in-ones and I won't be getting one again.
But for most people, who tend to have a single machine, a comparison to the 3 year old equivalent seems pretty fair to me.
The lackluster year-to-year is a bit of a bad sign WRT the long term trajectory, but they’ve been doing this successfully for quite a while, they’ve recovered from worse I suspect.
Mine is the M1-with-touchbar (same design as the intel version) which was released at the same time as the M1 MacBook Air - late 2020.
I develop on it every day, and i've no need to upgrade it, so i'll wait for the M4 :)
Is this really true? Three years sounds very new to me, and no one in their right minds would replace it.
there's also the relatively static pricing of these and generally growing wages, making short upgrade times more common.
If people were expecting gains like the Intel to M1 transition on an annual basis I'm not sure that was ever realistic.
A new model with the same configuration is also $3899.
Edit: But in any case, the difference would not be huge from what I can see, so I guess my point is moot
The closest I can configure a Dell XPS 15 is $3099, and that's a 14 core CPU and likely lower memory bandwidth and lower performance SSD. They claim 18 hours of battery but only with the base screen, the upgraded screen is presumably less.
And from personal experience using an XPS 15 is a significantly worse experience in stability, heat, fan noise, and real-world battery life.
And here are benchmarks for the XPS vs the M3 Max:
0. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook...
1. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook...
2. I assume Apple compared the M3 to M1 because most of the customers they are targeting are still on the M1.
M2 customers bought a computer less than a year ago and that pool of people is relatively small compared to the number on M1 today.
Well, they did announce it in an event called "scary fast". I mean there's always marketing exaggeration, but I did expect more than trying to understand if it's even faster at all. Otherwise I'm not entirely certain what the point was.
M3 Max is a massive gain over M2 Max. And M3 is a nice improvement over M2.
Hope that helps.
The only real exception to that is the M3 Pro, which is closer to the performance of the M2 Pro at a reduced core count.
> Well, they did announce it in an event called "scary fast".
> I mean there's always marketing exaggeration
> I did expect more than trying to understand if it's even faster at all
> I'm not entirely certain what the point was.
I feel like this is giving Apple the benefit of the doubt.
Most people here wouldn't say the same of Intel if they started comparing to 2 or 3 generations ago.
No, most likely they're comparing to M1 because it's the biggest difference that is still plausible to explain.
This is what product iterations look like, M2 only came out a year ago and M3 is a notable speed increase and just as important bump in battery life (22hrs is insane for the performance you get).
They compared to M1 and intel because people almost always wait 1-2 cycles before upgrading because MacBooks easily last 2yrs under heavy use and it’s an expensive upgrade.
The stats compare to m2 are there. They are just not the headline/summary.
Comparing M3s to old Intel macs would also be lame, and a fairly meaningless comparison.
It would be interesting to know how many people compare M series performance to Intel performance when buying, as those are usually going to be different markets surely?
To trying to justify why the M3 is 20% faster than the M1 and the M2 was also 20% faster than the M1 and weirdly Apple is only comparing it to their older processor.
Like people, maybe it’s just an underwhelming update… no need to pretend it’s not.