News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores. Parent comment

Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by larkost on Friday November 03, 2023 @01:21PM (#38131920)
I think the argument that this might not be great in the long run is worth considering, but in the short run I think that their results over the last few years are nothing short of astonishing. Specifically their laptops, especially when not plugged into a power source, have both stunning performance and battery life at the same time.

Yes there are competitor chips from AMD and the like that are faster when plugged in, but at a power budget that mean they are severely throttled when unplugged. This is what Apple cares about, and at this point they are unmatched. Apple likes to have fast desktop machines (and they do), but they don't care about that nearly as much as they care about laptops-in-laptop-mode. We are a couple of years into this, and Intel is making noises about trying to match this, but has not yet, and Apple seems to be pulling further ahead in specifically this area.

And they have a huge overlap in this focus in the development of the related processors for their iPhones/iPads/AppleTV products, and the upcoming headset. A lot of the development work gets largely reused in that other space, making Apples ROI even better.

So long as their is a big enough market that cares about that (and from the look of sales, there is), Apple's strategy seems to be a winning one.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by flashback2199 on Friday November 03, 2023 @01:29PM (#38132054)
They are making themselves more different from the rest of the market instead of "the same but better" which brought people back to the mac in the first place. It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Now it's like woo M chip is so different and fast look at my new Mac guys and then your friends who have PC say actually it's not faster it's just more power efficient and now the seed of wondering if Apple is really better has been planted whether or not it's totally true. I've already started seeing this happen on forums. The average person buying a Mac doesn't want to have to think about the nuances of specs and once they start digging into specs they might find themselves buying a PC instead. But we'll see, maybe the past won't repeat itself this time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by foldr on Friday November 03, 2023 @01:41PM (#38132256)
>It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had.

Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who buy computers have conversations like this with their friends. I am a software engineer, and could not care less which chips my friends have in their laptops.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by flashback2199 on Friday November 03, 2023 @03:29PM (#38133859)
Then why is their marketing right now all about the chip not the product
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by astrange on Friday November 03, 2023 @06:10PM (#38135696)
Why are you arguing about PC performance with your friends? Don't you have something better to do?

The biggest advantage of ARM over x86 is security, efficiency is second. Performance is nice to have but is kind of coincidental (depending on workload) and I'd expect everyone else to catch up.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by flashback2199 on Friday November 03, 2023 @08:23PM (#38136766)
Are you lost? This is HN, I talk with people about computers a lot.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores by astrange on Saturday November 04, 2023 @06:26AM (#38139683)
Yeah but you probably shouldn't. In my experience enthusiasts/power users aren't actually any more accurate on this subject than, say, your grandma. They just know bigger words they can use in conversations.

So there's got to be something either more productive or more grass-touching to do.

[ Parent | on HN ]