by al_borland
12 subcomments
- I always get a little bothered when I see negative reviews from a CPU update in Apple laptops. While a new CPU alone isn’t a thrilling update, it’s important that they do these regularly so consumers looking to buy aren’t forced to buy a 3 year old product with no idea when a refresh will come. I’ve been in this situation many times with Apple and it has been very frustrating. I’m glad they are back on a yearly refresh schedule.
I think the issue stems from too many people making their living off reviews that require something exciting to get views. When updates are more evolution than revolution, it makes for a more boring article/video. I always worry that these types of responses will lead Apple to do silly things, like leaving old chips out there too long, or adding pointless features just so there is something new to talk about.
- Not me: I wanted Apple’s software division to innovate like its hardware division. Extra power with nothing to use it on except more and more docker containers isn’t compelling to me. I’ve not upgraded my M1 Macbook Pro and don’t plan to
by neo_cs193p
1 subcomments
- Boring is what I wanted on the software side too.
I've really tried to like/tolerate Tahoe, but the UI is close to unusable in some places (like System Settings, some icons), plain ugly in other places (like menu bar fonts, window corners, dock etc.), or both (the contrast in most places where liquid glass and text interact).
It was messing with my workflow so bad, to the point I've given up. All my Macs are on Sequoia today.
One of the main reasons I've been using Macs is because the OS was functional and beautiful. This is becoming less and less true.
And it's not just resistance to change. I've also been skeptical about the UI transition from Catalina to Big Sur, but the usability issues were much smaller and I could was able to get used to the new look very quickly.
With Tahoe it's different: its ugliness is uncanny. I've just given up on it.
- Apple could have my money in exchange for their hardware. I won't even ask for support. They just need to provide the hardware specifications to Linux developers.
by willtemperley
2 subcomments
- We want cheaper storage, now. 1TB costs around $400 based on speccing a 2TB M5 Macbook pro.
That's probably a 4x markup, and the $200 to go from 256 to 512 is even worse.
Every time a user considers jumping from Windows but balks at the storage costs, that's leaving many thousands of potential revenue on the table. I just can't believe it really makes economic sense for them, except in short-term cashflow terms.
- I'm still typing this from an M1 MAX MBP w/ 64 gig of ram. I ended up needing more memory so, I swapped to this machine instead of my M1 air w/ 16gig. Both machines are completely capable for most tasks I deal with as a developer. Do I like my work m3? Sure. I wish I had the old m3 air I had to give back. But I'm happy with my machines.
It's funny that my ipad has a more current CPU than my two laptops.
- General purpose computing is what we wanted.
- I thought this was going to be about Apple's various recent catastrophic software innovations, saying "why did you have to mess with a good thing? We just wanted it to stay as-is, even if that's considered 'boring'"
- Mac hardware has so significantly outpaced software needs I think there are diminishing returns. I'm a software developer who uses all sorts of advanced stuff and I only bought an M4 Pro, not a Max, because it wasn't worth the extra money. There are so few applications that max out a CPU for any meaningful amount of time these days like rendering videos or 3D.
My M4 iPad Pro is amazing but feels totally overpowered for what it's capable of.
I guess what I'm saying is.......I don't need faster CPUs. I want longer battery life, 5G connectivity, WiFI 7, lighter weight, a better screen, a better keyboard, etc..
I guess it's odd that Apple spends so much time making faster computers when that is practically an already solved problem.
- Personally: I am extremely excited for a world where we have silicon that's capable of driving triple-A level gaming in the ~20w TDP envelope. M5 might actually be the first real glimpse we've had into this level of efficiency.
- > Back in the PowerPC and Intel days, Macs would sometimes go years between meaningful spec bumps, as Apple waited on its partners to deliver appropriate hardware for various machines.
Yes and no. Sometimes Intel did not move as fast as Apple wanted, and sometimes Apple didnt feel like it.
Especially the MacPro (trash can and old cheese-grate) and the MacMini (2012-2018) were neglected.
Today, the MacPro ships with M2 Ultra, the MacStudio ships with M3 Ultra, and its not certain that the MacMini and the iMac will get the M5 or will continue shipping with the M4 for the foreseeable future.
- I have a M1 Max MPB from 2022 with 32G RAM (which I'm grateful for).
More performance (especially for local AI models) is always great, but I'm trying to imagine what I'd want out of a design change!
I think slightly thinner would be nice, but not if it runs hotter or throttles.
Smaller bezels on the screen maybe?
I'm one of those who liked the touchbar (because I think that applications which labelled its shortcuts in the touchbar are awesome) so I think some innovation around things like that would be nice. But not if it compromises the perfect keyboard.
I do think MacOS would be improved with touchscreen support.
by Normal_gaussian
2 subcomments
- I've heard that the M-series chips with metal do great on the whole small model with low latency front; but I have no practical experience doing this yet. I'm hoping to add some local LLM/STT function to my office without heating my house.
I'm uncertain as to whether any M series mac will be performant enough and the M1/M2 mac mini's specifically, or whether there are features in the M3/M4/M5 architecture that make it worth my while to buy new.
Are these incremental updates actually massive in the model performance and latency space, or are they just as small or smaller?
- I can relate. Most users just want stable, quiet performance improvements, not a revolution every update.
Do you care more about performance improvements or new features?
by 0xbadcafebee
3 subcomments
- I hate that computers get faster, because it means I'll be forced to buy another laptop. It goes like this:
- Some developer buys a new laptop
- Developer writes software (a browser)
- When the software works "fast enough" on their new laptop, they ship it
- The software was designed to work on the dev's new laptop, not my old laptop
- Soon the software is too bloated to work on my old laptop
- So I have to buy a new laptop to run the software
Before I'd buy a laptop because it had cool new features. But now the only reason I buy a new one is the new software crashes from too little RAM, or runs too slowly. My old laptops work just fine. All the old apps they come with work just fine. Even new native apps work just fine. But they can't run a recent browser. And you can't do anything without a recent browser.If our computers never got faster, we would still be able to do everything the same that we can do today. But we wouldn't have to put down a grand every couple years to replace a perfectly good machine.
- Frankly I’d be incredibly exited if the next Apple OS update was “No new major featurs. Bug fixes, perf optimization, and minor ergonomic improvements only”.
- I have a 2020 intel 10nm quad core MBP and my god even the M2 is so much faster. They are doing absolutely incredible work to be getting >10% improvement every single year without fail starting from that point.
by dur-randir
0 subcomment
- Nah. I want fixes in macos, not "boring" nor "shiny updates".
by JodieBenitez
0 subcomment
- Still no need to upgrade my M1 MBA... life is good.
- For Exciting, look into RISC-V.
That's gonna be wild starting 2026, with the first implementations of RVA23, such as Tenstorrent Ascalon devboards TBA Q2.
by KolibriFly
0 subcomment
- Soo we can't demand both stability and constant reinvention
by stego-tech
0 subcomment
- For those of us immersed in hardware fandom, the cycle is neither new or disappointing - if anything, a lot of us relish the “boring” times, because it means we can finally squeeze performance out of our investment without fretting about arbitrary replacement timelines or major improvements in technology leading to gargantuan gains. It’s nice, quiet, and let’s us enjoy the fruits of our labors and hobbies.
That being said, I do kind of head-tilt at the folks screaming that this sort of “boring” cycle of hardware isn’t sustainable, that somehow, someone must create the next major improvement to justify all new spend or otherwise this is a worthless exercise. In reality, it’s always been the opposite: Moore’s Law wasn’t infinitely scalable, and anyone who suffered through the Pentium 4 era was painfully aware of its limitations. Sure, we can find other areas to scale (like going from clock speed to core counts, and core counts to core types), but Moore’s Law is not infallible or infinite; eventually, a plateau will be reached that cannot be overcome without serious R&D or a fundamental sea-change in the marketplace (like moving from x86 to ARM), often a combination of both.
Apple, at least, has the unenviable position of being among the first in addressing this challenge: how do you sell more products when power or efficiency gains are increasingly thin, year over year? Their approach has been to leverage services for recurring revenue and gradually slowing down product refreshes over time, while tempering expectations of massive gains for those product lines seeing yearly refreshes. I suspect that will be the norm for a lot of companies going forward, hence the drive to close walled gardens everywhere and lock-in customers (see also the Android sideloading discourse).
The hardware cycle at present is fairly boring, and I quite like it. My M1 iPad Pro and M1 Pro Macbook Pro dutifully serve me well, and I have no need to replace either until they break.
- I just want the old Macbook Air M1 design back :(
by philipwhiuk
2 subcomments
- What happened to the M3 GPU to give it a drop in score?
- Agree! very happy with the M4 performance.
- Reading this on my brand new M5 Mac :)
- This seems like a straw man. Are reviewers really calling the M5 boring?
- We want Apple to compete. When they stopped signing CUDA drivers, I thought it was because Apple had a competitive GPGPU solution that wasn't SPIR-V in a trenchcoat. Here we are 10 years later with SPIR-V in a trenchcoat. The lack of vision is pathetic and has undoubtedly cost Apple trillions in the past half-decade alone.
If you think this is a boring architecture, more power to you. It's not boring enough for me.
by bongripper
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by ZenoArrow
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
by bittercynic
3 subcomments
- They say no downside, but if you need to run windows 7 in virtualbox, you still need an intel mac (or other non-arm computer).
- > The difference is that with Apple silicon, Apple owns and controls the primary technologies behind the products it makes, as Tim Cook has always wanted.
But did customers want it?
I'll leave it here, as the point is made.
by bryanlarsen
7 subcomments
- M1 had performance/watt way ahead of x86.
M5 has performance/watt below Panther Lake.
Is that really what you want?