Apple 'Scary Fast' Mac event October 30th

Lakados said:
I can already hear the sound of my Inbox being filled with sudden issues with the existing M1 fleet, not because anything is actually wrong or because of some supposed software update that made it slow. But simply because theirs is old.
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I’ll just buy a model with RT in 2-3 years. lol. I just got my M1 Max and it flies. And while having this come out feels bad, it’s not like it will be any slower than it is.
 
paradoxical said:
I'm not sure what you are talking about with multi-monitor support in OSX, it's absolutely wonderful - and window management is a joy with tools like BetterSnapTool. I have three primary work locations: my desk on floor 2, my desk on floor 3, and my home office. At each desk I have identical setups:

Samsung G9 Neo 49in ultrawide on an ergotron arm
Alienware 34in OLED ultrawide on ergotron arm to the right of the G9 Neo (I regret these monitors BTW, text sucks)
iPad Pro front and center beneath the G9 NEO
Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 dock

The G9 Neo serves as my primary monitor. On the left side of the screen I have my company Notion with my to-do list. On the middle of the screen I have my main work browser/excel/Premiere/whatever window, which is wider than the side windows. On the right of the screen I have my inbox.
On the Alienware I have Slack, facebook messenger, and apple messenger which handles all of my comms. Then I have two browser windows with my ecommerce dashboards visible at all times.
The iPad Pro is a third monitor which works awesome with Apple's native integration and has my daily calendar view front and center.

This an incredibly productive workflow and all of this is connected to my MBP with a single thunderbolt 4 cable. I can seamlessly get up and walk to any of my desks, plug in, and all of my windows even snap right to their defined locations I set with BetterSnapTool.

Further, when I am traveling for work I bring the iPad Pro 12.9 with me and always have a second monitor wherever I am that seamlessly is integrated into my workflow. It's incredibly powerful, and nothing on Windows is as seamlessly integrated.




The reason I always go for the 8TB SSD is because that allows me to keep my entire company's Dropbox local on my machine and not on the cloud. The only thing I don't have locally is our 20TB of specialty engineering data. Having everything stored locally (all marketing videos, production media, photos, etc) allows me to be much more productive on airplanes or in hotels with shit internet.
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You can do all of that on Windows... with more, or less, work than getting it dialed in on MacOS. But glad you got your MacOS dailed in the way you like :)
 
The iMac just confuses me. I mean all-in-one PCs kind of always have, but the mini is just so much better and such a better value.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
The iMac just confuses me. I mean all-in-one PCs kind of always have, but the mini is just so much better and such a better value.
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The colour accuracy on the iMac is great as is the clarity, if you don’t need those then 100%, but if you do its break even.
 
Lakados said:
The colour accuracy on the iMac is great as is the clarity, if you don’t need those then 100%, but if you do its break even.
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I know, and an equivalent monitor with a Mini is probably even more money, even at 24 inches. There's just this mental thing with me over all in one PCs.

I love the colours, though. Computing needs to be prettier.
 
You have to appreciate the marketing speak like they just split the atom, but can only give you a black usb-c cable but not a black power adapter to match.

Pick six on the 1 yard line.
 
Mos Eisley said:
You have to appreciate the marketing speak like they just split the atom, but can only give you a black usb-c cable but not a black power adapter to match.

Pick six on the 1 yard line.
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That one hit home...
 
Twisted Kidney said:
I know, and an equivalent monitor with a Mini is probably even more money, even at 24 inches. There's just this mental thing with me over all in one PCs.

I love the colours, though. Computing needs to be prettier.
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I get them for places where I just want minimal cables and those machines are just being used for basic things, have a machine in a staff room for timesheet entry, a few in the back for night audits and basic data verification, things where the single cable and the small footprint is a life saver.
The slight price difference is worth the convenience of never being called out because something isn't working to repeatedly ask the question are you sure X is plugged in to get there and plug it in.
Hard to get that question wrong when there is only one cable to check.
 
cpufrost said:
Probably going to be a while for that.
Their flash prices are crazy high considering the market has tanked!
Trade in values are lower too.

Scary $$$!
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Ow

Their prices scale so horribly. Like ok, there's a premium on stuff the typical person is likely to buy, but it's whatever. Someone wants one for school to basically use Google docs and they get 5 years out of their $1400 machine. Not bad honestly.

Then you scale up a machine with more memory and shit and you just get absolutely bent over. Like $200 to jump from 500 to 1tb disk. You can get a good 2tb nvme for like $150.

It's like $12.5/gb of ram. 64gb is effectively $800 versus like... $160 you can find DDR5 for.

And you have to go up processor wise to even get these options so you getting your nuts caved in even harder.
 
1_rick said:
Why not spend probably half the money on a cheap NUCalike from Beelink or someone?
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I don't use Apple ones for that no way, they are cheap last year Dell 24" AiOs they sell off on clearance for dirt, I would be hard-pressed to build anything for what they come to.
By the time they are on-site shipping and government included they are in the $600 CAD range.
 
The only thing scary about Apple's M3's is how they took a page from Nvidia and charge $1,800 for 8GB of ram. Also it seems the M3's are more downgrade than upgrade. Less cores and less memory bandwidth than the M2's?
apple scary.jpg
 
Some early benchmarks I’ve seen, dated a day after that “oh no it’s got fewer cores” article show the M3 Max handily beating the M2 Max, and also beating the M2 Ultra which was basically two M2 Max chips glued together.
 
LodeRunner said:
Some early benchmarks I’ve seen, dated a day after that “oh no it’s got fewer cores” article show the M3 Max handily beating the M2 Max, and also beating the M2 Ultra which was basically two M2 Max chips glued together.
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Yeah the M3 Max in "maxed out" config should have eye watering performance to match its wallet flattening price. ;-)
 
cpufrost said:
Yeah the M3 Max in "maxed out" config should have eye watering performance to match its wallet flattening price. ;-)
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It will be interesting to see how it lines up performance wise.

I can say that if you’re a video editor and you want things for fusion/AE, and real time performance you’ll be happy there. Though it’s also worth noting that the M1 Max already gets you there. Without citing “myself” MKBHD as an example uses one to render multiple RedRAW 8k streams when shooting in the field. And though he can afford it, he didn’t upgrade to M2, and states that he doesn’t really need to upgrade to M3 either other than because of the new black color.

So the question will become whether or not the increased feature set makes this machine make sense for other people outside of video editors. If as an example RT and mesh shading make the dollar per performance value in something like Octane have it make sense vs a PC laptop with a mobile 4090 or not. It will certainly lose in gaming performance, but with 128GB of memory that the GPU has access to, it may be able to run models a 4090 can’t. Especially on mobile.

Certainly for the “right” buyer that wants full throttle performance on battery there will be no PC competition there, but it’s likely that that precise type of user is “relatively” slim. Though I think there are far more people that want to use a laptop as a laptop than this forum gives credit for.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
The iMac just confuses me. I mean all-in-one PCs kind of always have, but the mini is just so much better and such a better value.
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My friend has one in his kitchen, just cause it looks cool and they're rich. Only people i've ever seen really use them tend to be older, or for child's room.
 
cpufrost said:
Yeah the M3 Max in "maxed out" config should have eye watering performance to match its wallet flattening price. ;-)
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I dunno. I think compared to Apple's RAM and SSD prices the upgrade to the Max CPU is surprisingly cheap (if you take the included RAM and SSD upgrades into account) for what it offers.
 
Verge said:
My friend has one in his kitchen, just cause it looks cool and they're rich. Only people i've ever seen really use them tend to be older, or for child's room.
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Mind you, that’s pretty appealing to many people. I’m jonesing for an iMac as the family computer when my son is old enough.
 
LodeRunner said:
Maybe the performance per core is up enough to get away with that and the memory bandwidth reduction will turn out to be ultimately meaningless? We’ll see when reviews come in I suppose.
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Sounds like Apple really took an influence from Nvidia this time.
 
Doesn't look good for the M3 Pro. In before Geekbench updates to "fix" M3 Pro performance. At least it's 6% faster in multicore performance. There's a reason why Apple compared the M3's to the M1's and not the M2's. Seems rushed to get out before Intel's Meteor Lake and Snapdragon X Elite which I'm betting are gonna be better than the M2's. Reviewers will review the M3's but probably not again after Meteor Lake and Snapdragon X Elite are released.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3390128
 
DukenukemX said:
Doesn't look good for the M3 Pro. In before Geekbench updates to "fix" M3 Pro performance. At least it's 6% faster in multicore performance. There's a reason why Apple compared the M3's to the M1's and not the M2's. Seems rushed to get out before Intel's Meteor Lake and Snapdragon X Elite which I'm betting are gonna be better than the M2's. Reviewers will review the M3's but probably not again after Meteor Lake and Snapdragon X Elite are released.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3390128
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How is that 'not good'? It's still faster, the same price, and a substantial gain on battery life along with adding feature sets to the GPU portion.
 
Mchart said:
How is that 'not good'? It's still faster, the same price, and a substantial gain on battery life along with adding feature sets to the GPU portion.
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And if you are somebody who works with lots of Video or Audio the amount of raw source data you can load and work with simultaneously with no stuttering or lag is kinda crazy.
I still have my M1 Studio on my desk at work and it's still churning out the reports and data I need it to at speeds that I don't need to upgrade it from, if anything that is the biggest issue with the M2 and M3 for me, I don't need the extra oomph or features they provide because even if they did the job in 30 minutes instead of the hour and a half the M1 takes, it still takes me 2h to physically deal with the other tasks that use that data, so all that would end up happening is it sits idle longer and the power/noise savings from that isn't worth the expenditure unlike going from the Threadripper to the M1 because while that move didn't have any significant change in completion time Threadripper Pro with Quadro maybe did it in 1:24 where the M1 does it in 1:32 not having that Lenovo P620 under my desk cooking me out of my office mid-summer was totally worth it and that Machine could then be better-used elsewhere.
 
Mchart said:
How is that 'not good'? It's still faster, the same price, and a substantial gain on battery life along with adding feature sets to the GPU portion.
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It's not good when your competitors are already much faster than that. Here's an M2 Pro and you can see that the multithread performance is only 6 faster. The single core is 13.5% faster for the M3 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404851

For comparison, the M2 Pro was over 13% faster in multithreaded compared to the M1 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404968
 
DukenukemX said:
It's not good when your competitors are already much faster than that. Here's an M2 Pro and you can see that the multithread performance is only 6 faster. The single core is 13.5% faster for the M3 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404851

For comparison, the M2 Pro was over 13% faster in multithreaded compared to the M1 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404968
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Much faster compared to what? The m2 pro and now m3 pro are faster compared to any counterpart. Just because the gain between generation isn’t massive doesn’t mean it’s still not the fastest for the segment type.
 
DukenukemX said:
It's not good when your competitors are already much faster than that. Here's an M2 Pro and you can see that the multithread performance is only 6 faster. The single core is 13.5% faster for the M3 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404851

For comparison, the M2 Pro was over 13% faster in multithreaded compared to the M1 Pro.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3404968
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Geekbench is also showing the M3 GPU as only 7% slower than a 4080, which I find highly suspect. I would take any scores posted there with a whole ass box of salt.
 
Comparing benchmarks is meaningless on apple computers.

They have a very targeted audience for these laptops:
A) people need proprietary apple software to do development work
B) People who don't care, just want a trendy laptop
C) People who specialize in a field dominated by Apple (such as artistic centered industries)
D) People invested deeply into Apple's ecosystem.


Benchmarks are meaningless as Apple's software and hardware cohesiveness tends to cause real world performance not necessarily coorelate with those benchmarks.

Besides, I have 2 macbooks, a 2016 pro, and a 2023 m2 Pro (from January). The newer one performs MUCH better, obviously, but the 2016 one is more than acceptable still, 7 years later for most of my work loads. They don't, and haven't needed to, release significant upgrades to the macbook line in some time, and I think they are to that stage in the smartphone game as well.

You buy a Macbook pro for the OS, otherwise 10/10 you're better off getting a pc that performs just as well for probably half the price.

Now one thing I would like them to do is make their hardware repairable, their built in DRM on replacement parts is incredibly anti-consumer, so wondering if that's a thing on these newer machines.
 
Lifelite said:
Comparing benchmarks is meaningless on apple computers.

They have a very targeted audience for these laptops:
A) people need proprietary apple software to do development work
B) People who don't care, just want a trendy laptop
C) People who specialize in a field dominated by Apple (such as artistic centered industries)
D) People invested deeply into Apple's ecosystem.


Benchmarks are meaningless as Apple's software and hardware cohesiveness tends to cause real world performance not necessarily coorelate with those benchmarks.

Besides, I have 2 macbooks, a 2016 pro, and a 2023 m2 Pro (from January). The newer one performs MUCH better, obviously, but the 2016 one is more than acceptable still, 7 years later for most of my work loads. They don't, and haven't needed to, release significant upgrades to the macbook line in some time, and I think they are to that stage in the smartphone game as well.

You buy a Macbook pro for the OS, otherwise 10/10 you're better off getting a pc that performs just as well for probably half the price.

Now one thing I would like them to do is make their hardware repairable, their built in DRM on replacement parts is incredibly anti-consumer, so wondering if that's a thing on these newer machines.
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It is, but they’ve expanded Apple Care to cover just about anything from natural failure to “Oh Shit! I just dumped my coffee all over it!”.
So I guess add that to the Apple Tax but it at least comes with FedEx Express shipping labels and 0 questions.
 
Lifelite said:
Comparing benchmarks is meaningless on apple computers.
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You'd have to site your sources on this. Because I think as Apple has heated up their performance, especially performance per watt, there are a lot of people willing to use a Mac vs a PC.
This is in light of Apple ARM gaining marketshare in the laptop segment. It's telling that this M3 launch event was literally all laptops and a 2 year old iMac refresh, and they left the Studio/Mac Pro/Mini (all the desktops other than the un-refreshed iMac) on the table. Apple knows their primary demographic.
 
You definitely don't want to run an expensive Macbook without Applecare.

It does not cover fluid spills, though.
 
uOpt said:
You definitely don't want to run an expensive Macbook without Applecare.

It does not cover fluid spills, though.
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Yes it does, albeit with a deductible.

https://www.apple.com/support/products/mac/

AppleCare+ for Mac provides global repair coverage, both parts and labor, from Apple-authorized technicians around the world.
Coverage includes the following:
  • Your Mac computer
  • Battery1
  • Included accessories such as the power adapter
  • Apple memory (RAM)
  • Apple USB SuperDrive
  • Unlimited incidents of accidental damage protection, each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299 for other accidental damage, plus applicable tax1
 
UnknownSouljer said:
You'd have to site your sources on this.
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I'm unsure of what you mean. It's common knowledge that Apple's synergy between their hardware and software makes real world performance better verses a simlarly specced PC. Plus it really depends on your uses. I much prefer doing development on a Macbook personally, even with windows now having WLS and a pretty solid terminal.

My PC is specced in my signature, my Macbook Pro:

1699214832567.png

Current PC is more than overpowered for dev work flows, but Intellisense is slow as hell when running Pycharm, Webstorm, IntelliJ at the same time where on my Mac, no sweat whatsoever. There's a ton of variables there that could affect that perception but without a doubt this Macbook performs noticeably better. I realize this is primarily anecdote but just in my experience, benchmarks on just raw performance isn't an indicator of real world performance when comparing Apple hardware with non-apple hardware, which is all I was stating.
 
Lakados said:
It is, but they’ve expanded Apple Care to cover just about anything from natural failure to “Oh Shit! I just dumped my coffee all over it!”.
So I guess add that to the Apple Tax but it at least comes with FedEx Express shipping labels and 0 questions.
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Yeah but my older system was a work buyback and coverage has expired. When that battery starts to give, I want to be able to replace it without worry (for probably 60 bucks vs Apple's prices) and be good to go. It's more of a longetivity thing than anything.
 
Lifelite said:
I'm unsure of what you mean. It's common knowledge that Apple's synergy between their hardware and software makes real world performance better verses a simlarly specced PC. Plus it really depends on your uses. I much prefer doing development on a Macbook personally, even with windows now having WLS and a pretty solid terminal.

My PC is specced in my signature, my Macbook Pro:

View attachment 611209
Current PC is more than overpowered for dev work flows, but Intellisense is slow as hell when running Pycharm, Webstorm, IntelliJ at the same time where on my Mac, no sweat whatsoever. There's a ton of variables there that could affect that perception but without a doubt this Macbook performs noticeably better.
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Right. But you're acknowledging that use case here matters.

It seems incredibly odd to me to state that people can buy a "similarly spec'ed PC for less" (which they can't because the architectures are totally different and Qualcomm ARM is a hot pile of garbage) but then also say that your Mac produces significantly better results.
Lifelite said:
I realize this is primarily anecdote but just in my experience, benchmarks on just raw performance isn't an indicator of real world performance when comparing Apple hardware with non-apple hardware, which is all I was stating.
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If that's the case, then all of your preceding statements in both this post and the previous one were entirely misleading. There's "burying the lead" and then whatever this was.

This doesn't go against anything you've said per se, but: what has been annoying me for a while here is the debate about optimization and how that determines whether something is more performative or "not".
"Apple isn't faster, they just have specialized encoders", okay and? It doesn't matter how it gets done, so long as it does (and obviously does so without an erroneous result). When speaking of PC hardware no one tries to make a similar statement about an optimization nVidia makes as "cheating" if it gives the same visual fidelity and does it faster. Granted in the video world things are rarely that clean (all compromises) but again those same things could be said of Apple's performance optimizations. Cut and dry or otherwise.

How the sausage gets made matters little. People who make alternative arguments to that point, frankly have a chip on their shoulder.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Right. But you're acknowledging that use case here matters.

It seems incredibly odd to me to state that people can buy a "similarly spec'ed PC for less" (which they can't because the architectures are totally different and Qualcomm ARM is a hot pile of garbage) but then also say that your Mac produces significantly better results.

If that's the case, then all of your preceding statements in both this post and the previous one were entirely misleading. There's "burying the lead" and then whatever this was.

This doesn't go against anything you've said per se, but: what has been annoying me for a while here is the debate about optimization and how that determines whether something is more performative or "not".
"Apple isn't faster, they just have specialized encoders", okay and? It doesn't matter how it gets done, so long as it does (and obviously does so without an erroneous result). When speaking of PC hardware no one tries to make a similar statement about an optimization nVidia makes as "cheating" if it gives the same visual fidelity and does it faster. Granted in the video world things are rarely that clean (all compromises) but again those same things could be said of Apple's performance optimizations. Cut and dry or otherwise.

How the sausage gets made matters little. People who make alternative arguments to that point, frankly have a chip on their shoulder.
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Wasn't intending to mislead at all, a macbook just isn't as versatile as a windows or linux computer, so you'll likely be better off unless you fall into those categories I mentioned before, because otherwise you're buying a really expensive laptop when you could just buy a windows pc for cheaper, one that does more (or is more compatible for a variety of needs) than the mac. What's the point of comparing benchmarks scores when they can never be apples to apples comparisons (pun intended)? That's the point I'm making.

New apple laptops can perform better in certain use cases, but can it run crysis? :ROFLMAO:. At the same time you aren't going to run some industry standard software like Final Cut Pro on windows...because you can't.
 
Lifelite said:
Wasn't intending to mislead at all, a macbook just isn't as versatile as a windows or linux computer, so you'll likely be better off unless you fall into those categories I mentioned before, because otherwise you're buying a really expensive laptop when you could just buy a windows pc for cheaper, one that does more (or is more compatible for a variety of needs) than the mac. What's the point of comparing benchmarks scores when they can never be apples to apples comparisons (pun intended)? That's the point I'm making.
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Right, but that's a really convoluted way to explain the obvious.

I'm a big proponent of buying the machine that makes the most sense for the proverbial "your" use case. However for a vast majority of users, I don't think there are specific programs that are necessary to do whatever job. And I would say that software that is that level of specialized that similar can't be done on the other side is also vanishingly small. It's honestly getting to the point where it's just preference for specific workflow far more than it is about whether a particular machine is capable. Other than actual processing power (circling back around to that again).
Lifelite said:
New apple laptops can perform better in certain use cases, but can it run crysis? :ROFLMAO:.
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Yes.
Lifelite said:
At the same time you aren't going to run some industry standard software like Final Cut Pro on windows...because you can't.
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Again, yes. Though I would say that full time Final Cut editors are in a vast minority. It's still all Premiere, Resolve, and Avid. For some reality TV stuff I have heard of story writers using Vegas.
 
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