October 18th Apple Event - Unleashed - Apple Silicon, MacBook Pro upgrades, HomePod mini, AirPods 3rd Generation

[igormp]

39 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I think you are mixing terms, this is true for Uniform Memory Access (UMA) not Unified Memory Archecture (UMA). To be fair UMA is not a common short name or acronym for Unified Memory Archecture but I couldn't be bothered typing it in full more than once.

Oops, fair enough, my bad.

[leadeater]

Just now, igormp said:

Oops, fair enough, my bad.

Eh, mostly mine for using improper terminology lol

[Obioban]

57 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yes but you are stating an opinion that you think they last longer, have a longer service life. If you however break it down in to market segments then that tells a very different story and highlights quite a big problem in the industry, a problem that like I said Apple does not share.

 

If you are talking about consumer laptops then I agree, if you are talking about business laptops then I do not agree.

 

You asked where Apple does not lead, business laptop market where they are all very much equal. Why is this difficult to understand?

 

An HP EliteBook is not equivalent to or even in the same market category as an HP Pavilion.

 

Consumer laptops and business laptops are district different markets, they shouldn't really be but they are. Apple sells the exact same devices in to both markets.

 

They are different even down to the CPUs that are in them, business laptops come with Intel CPUs that support things like Intel vPro.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree that life in the business market is a meaningful statistic at all— life of of the product before it’s junk is what matters.  Life functioning as a business laptop does not determine the life of the product.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Obioban said:

I guess I just fundamentally disagree that life in the business market is a meaningful statistic at all— life of of the product before it’s junk is what matters.  Life functioning as a business laptop does not determine the life of the product.

Yes and I'm saying the life of the product, those that are business models are exactly the same as Apple MacBooks. Are you even reading what I am saying? I'm not saying the life in the business market matters, I'm saying the products in the business market are better, last longer, and go on to new homes.

 

MacBook Purchased by consumer or business -> Used for 5 Years -> Replaced with new model -> existing laptop handed on to new person to be used.

HP EliteBook Purchased by consumer (rarely) or business -> Used for 5 Years -> Replaced with new model -> existing laptop handed on to new person to be used.

HP Pavilion Purchased by consumer -> Used for 3-5 Years -> Probably dead battery, fan or compromised chassis from cheap plastic -> thrown in garbage.

 

So tell me again how the difference between a business laptop and a consumer laptop does not matter when the consumer one is more often dead and the business one is either given away or refurbished and resold?

 

I didn't raise this on a per specific model basis because that isn't fair and you'd be right to say that however the above is widely true of ALL business laptops from ALL OEMs/vendors. So it is in fact a materially important factor and difference, because if every laptop on the wider market as a whole where only the business product lines then every laptop would have equivalent service lives so there would be no difference between Apple laptops and non Apple laptops but there is, only when comparing consumer laptops however.

[Obioban]

Someone should tell my work. My work provider $4000 CAD laptops is a hunk of junk.

 

So your point is that ex work PC laptops bring up the PC average, but there’s no way to distinguish them from the normal PCs, so their longevity is hidden?

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Obioban said:

Someone should tell my work. My work provider $4000 CAD laptops is a hunk of junk.

And what exactly makes it a hunk of junk? Let me guess it's plastic so it's automatically junk, or some other silly reason. Yet IBM/Lenovo laptops have always been industrial plastic, look like ass, yet last for decades and the chassis doesn't degrade over time.

 

15 minutes ago, Obioban said:

So your point is that ex work PC laptops bring up the PC average

No, I don't care about the wider PC average. Consumer laptops and Business laptops are literally different markets, you can go check this on HP/Dell/Lenovo website they make it very obvious by having business product sections on their websites that automatically filter the products for you. Also why is it Intel and AMD have specific business focused products and marketing if there wasn't a differentiator in the market? Never seen an Intel vPro sticker on a laptop or marketing around it? Never seen AMD Ryzen Pro Mobile CPUs?

 

How come there is so much parts and products dedicated business product lines if no such thing exists?

 

Their longevity is not hidden, it's very well known that business laptops last longer than consumer laptops, you not being aware of this difference only make you not aware of it and not that it is not a thing.

 

So back to the entire beginning, you asked a question, I gave you the answer, business laptops. Because I consider Apple MacBook Pros to also be business products.

[HenrySalayne]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

My point (by asking how frequent/important/deal_breakers some upgrade procedures are out there in the real world) is that maybe some vocal tinkerers are the 5% demanding design trade-offs that benefit that 5% and don’t necessarily benefit the 95% (that maybe is better served by preposterously good speakers, beefier cooling and the motherboard PCB getting smaller and smaller and smaller).

 

On the other hand I didn’t shy away from saying that the way Apple manages to put psychological pressure on you (I just went thru this) when you’re on that CTO configuration page and you feel compelled to future proof your RAM and storage choice is almost an art at this point. So there’s that too. 

Fair point. I would only add that it is not a trade-off. The additional space for exchangeable storage will not change something the size of a Macbook in any particular way or make it worse. So the 95% of people who don't care don't need to bother and the other 5% can happily take out the drive and recover all the data when someone spills a drink on their device.

The main problem of this approach is reliability. Overall reliability of a single PCB design might be equal or is likely higher than the reliability of a design with individual components (every connector adds additional failure modes) but from a per-component perspective the single PCB design is less reliable (more failure modes compared to each of the (smaller) components). Which means your laptop is less likely to fail (stop working altogether) when using a single PCB but it is more likely you will lose all your data.

 

The exorbitant pricing of any upgrades is just the cherry on top (most costumers must have Stockholm syndrome).

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Fair point. I would only add that it is not a trade-off. The additional space for exchangeable storage will not change something the size of a Macbook in any particular way or make it worse. So the 95% of people who don't care don't need to bother and the other 5% can happily take out the drive and recover all the data when someone spills a drink on their device.

The main problem of this approach is reliability. Overall reliability of a single PCB design might be equal or is likely higher than the reliability of a design with individual components (every connector adds additional failure modes) but from a per-component perspective the single PCB design is less reliable (more failure modes compared to each of the (smaller) components). Which means your laptop is less likely to fail (stop working altogether) when using a single PCB but it is more likely you will lose all your data.

 

The exorbitant pricing of any upgrades is just the cherry on top (most costumers must have Stockholm syndrome).

Remember back when MacBook Pros used DIMMs and replaceable storage and how they had really high failure rates? I don't remember that at all 

 

MacBook Pro 13" 2009: DIMMs, HDD, CPU and GPU, 60Wh battery

MacBook Pro 13" 2020 (early, Intel): Soldered DRAM, Soldered NAND, CPU, 58Wh battery

MacBook Pro 13" 2020 (late, M1): M1 SoC with on package LPDDR, Soldered NAND, 58Wh battery

MacBook Pro 14" 2021: M1 Pro/Max SoC with on package LPDDR, soldered NAND, 70Wh battery

 

Wooooowww....

 

Ok so not entirely fair since Intel started providing nuclear reactor CPUs to Apple so they needed a lot more cooling but they gained a ton of space back from not using HDDs. So what exactly did we gain when Apple started soldering NAND and DRAM on to the mainboards (M1 SoCs excluded)?

[saltycaramel]

“now that the SoCs are more efficient than the previous Intel CPU + AMD GPU solution, if anything they could make the cooling less beefy and the main board larger”

 

That’s an early-2010s-Apple way of thinking. That make-it-thinner Apple that thought the 2013 MacPro and the 2016 MacbookPros were a good idea. 

 

Today’s Apple (a make-it-thicker-if-it’s-pro Apple that regularly makes iPhones heavier and thicker) is doing something different. On Pro machines, they’re using that newfound efficiency not to “sit on their as$es” (by making the cooling less beefy and shoot for last gen levels of sustained performance) but instead to double down on power (making these MacPro-in-your-backpack machines). Never has the smaller MBP had access to the same GPU power of the bigger MBP. Never has the bigger MBP been able to achieve this kind quietness during sustained loads. (see video below for a demonstration of both claims)

 

 

On the other hand, the non-Pro side, they’re doubling down on thinness and (in the case of the Macbook Air) “fanlessness”. So far we’ve only seen one newly-designed product in the non-Pro camp, the iMac M1, and what they were able to achieve thanks to a stripped down main board living in the chin speaks for itself:

 

Pretty sure that your dentist’s reception or hotel check-in desk will benefit from this more than from socketed RAM/SSD.

We still have to see the laptop side of this story, the completely redesigned M2 Macbook Air, and I’m pretty sure it will be something to behold both on the outside and on the inside (which once again will show us the importance of a smaller main board PCB and that if there is a point of diminishing returns, for sure we hadn’t hit it yet). 

 

In a way, today’s Apple (compared to early-2010s-Apple) is living up better to this classic 1999 Steve Jobs product matrix:

 

 

More distinction between consumer and pro lines.

Doubling down on different things. 

Now with complete control over the silicon. 

[saltycaramel]

6 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

The exorbitant pricing of any upgrades is just the cherry on top (most costumers must have Stockholm syndrome).

 

That’s exactly how I defined it a couple of pages ago, but I think it goes more like this:

 

1) most consumers are perfectly served by Apple’s stock configurations, plus Apple has some safety nets in place both for insufficient RAM (swap to extremely fast SSD, imagine if customers were free to install slow SSDs) and insufficient storage (some of the best automated systems for local-to-cloud and cloud-to-local thinning of locally stored photos, videos, apps, etc. in the industry)

 

2) some consumers (like me) have to spend some time swearing at Apple on the CTO page, but hey that’s capitalism, they know we won’t find that miniLED 120Hz 3.5K display and that M1 Pro/Max elsewhere, and we know as well, hence we happily (or not) reward them by letting them brutally upsell us to higher RAM/SSD tiers

 

(to be clear, the prices of RAM/SSD upgrades aren’t necessarily bad per se since we’re talking LPDDR5 that also serves as VRAM and a very fast 7.2GB/s ssd for the 4TB/8TB tiers, the “mischievous” part is the pressure you feel because there’s no way to upgrade after the fact)

[leadeater]

37 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Pretty sure that your dentist’s reception or hotel check-in desk will benefit from this more than from socketed RAM/SSD.

How, unless you take off the iMac base and put it on a Vesa mount it takes up the exact same desk space. Not saying it's bad thing though, just effectively a non difference between the two in that regard.

 

37 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

On the other hand, the non-Pro side, they’re doubling down on thinness and (in the case of the Macbook Air) “fanlessness”.

Well for the MacBook Air I support this, the SoC has low enough power to not need a higher end cooling solution and even under long sustained loads the performance loss is very low. The chassis rigidity wasn't even all that compromised either since Apple designed reinforcing in to it. Still the best laptop on the market in my opinion unless you actually need a lot of Windows specific apps.

 

37 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

In a way, today’s Apple (compared to early-2010s-Apple) is living up better to this classic 1999 Steve Jobs product matrix:

Yep, the new MacBook Pro's are a good nod towards Apple of old rather than Apple of late. But that was happening earlier with the Mac Pro coming back in a form factor that people actually wanted it to be.

 

Apple has gotten a bit weird with their products though and I'd say straying away from Apple's original core visions, iPad Pro for example. Nothing bad about it at all but it doesn't seem to fit with why Apple made the iPad in the first place and what they believed such devices should be used for. Tablets with keyboards just does not match Apple's ethos. That's just my personal evaluation of that situation, just think it's weird coming from a company that will go to it's grave before putting touch screens on it's laptops yet gives tablets keyboards.

[Video Beagle]

10 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

Consumer laptops and business laptops are district different markets, they shouldn't really be but they are. Apple sells the exact same devices in to both markets.

 

His point is that Apple's products.. their phones or laptops or e-watches last longer than other peoples phones or laptops or e-watches.

 

He's talking about products. You're talking about markets. Stop talking about markets. You either misunderstood the intention of his comment, or deliberately side stepped the point he was making to argue something else.

 

 

________________________________

 

Now, I need someone to explain to me something... According to the thing I saw from iFixit...the new Macbooks HAVE servisable batteries. That's what the whole tab thing means, right? So, because you can't bitch that they don't have servicible batteries, you're bitching that you don't like tabs on your batteries? Is that what I'm understanding?

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

His point is that Apple's products.. their phones or laptops or e-watches last longer than other peoples phones or laptops or e-watches.

 

He's talking about products. You're talking about markets. Stop talking about markets. You either misunderstood the intention of his comment, or deliberately side stepped the point he was making to argue something else.

I understood his point perfectly fine and you can add yourself to the group that just doesn't get it either then. Apple laptops are laptops, in the same market as windows laptops, they are all laptops therefore Apple laptops have crappy service lives because of all the low end cheap acer laptops...

 

Or maybe there actually is a difference.

 

What he did was ask a question only seeking confirmation of his opinion. Well I gave my opinion back and it's exactly as valid as his and yours. Buy a business laptop and enjoy it not failing and lasting a long time.

[Video Beagle]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What he did was ask a question only seeking confirmation of his opinion. Well I gave my opinion back and it's exactly as valid as his and yours. Buy a business laptop and enjoy it not failing and lasting a long time.

As I've worked in returns on both lenovo and dell business laptops, I don't agree they last as long as macbooks, but then I don't use my macbook as a frisbee as I suspect people using those lenovo and dell's do.

 

And perhaps I misunderstood and you're referring to something specifically sold as "business laptop" rather than laptops sold via the business sales unit...I've not paid enough attention to the market to note if that's an actual thing.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

And perhaps I misunderstood and you're referring to something specifically sold as "business laptop" rather than laptops sold via the business sales unit...I've not paid enough attention to the market to note if that's an actual thing.

Yes sold as a business laptop since these are separate product lines going through different design processes likely by entirely different group of designers and engineers. HP etc are massive companies so I doubt the people working on Pavilion laptops are the same ones working on EliteBooks.

 

My point is only that products under the business umbrella are of a higher standard than those under the consumer umbrella from the brands like HP/Dell/Lenovo.

[mr moose]

18 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

Never said it’s worse because it’s serviceable.

 

It just happens to be “worse” AND more serviceable. 

 

Like, of course a very serviceable x86 laptop (without on package very-fast low-power LPDDR5 unified memory, without the SSD controller being a first class citizen on the main die and with potential for CPU-like year-over-year speed bumps, without the flash storage baseline speed being guaranteed by the laptop maker picking the flash modules besides creating and fine-tuning the controller, without everything that’s on package being pretty close to each other which as we know generally is a good thing, etc.) could be proven (for many usages, scenarios and most people) to be worse (or to say it better: NOT WORSE IN GENERAL, just built with different priorities, priorities that just happen to make it worse for most people) IF it does less work while using more battery juice than an M1 Pro MBP or an M1 MBA. 

 

Even iFixit is kinda beginning to admit that there may be some correlation there. I loved the humility in their approach. “We still can’t say for sure”. They don’t have all the answers and they don’t automatically think they’re better than Apple’s engineers. The hearts of one thousand anti-integration r2r integralists when they said that maybe on such products soldered RAM and soldered flash modules shouldn’t be penalized in the score:

 

 

 

 

 

Your argument is that anyone who wants devices to be user serviceable (for whatever reason) is a basher.  Then you tried to tie performance inversely to serviceability.  Both arguments make neither sense nor are founded on any reasonable engineering limitation. 

 

Just because shit user serviceable windows laptops exist does not make higher performance non serviceable apple laptops better for the environment over serviceable ones.

 

A broken device that cannot be repaired is ewaste/landfill no matter how well it performed new.

[saltycaramel]

18 minutes ago, leadeater said:

How

 

Beautiful human-friendly design, plain and simple. 

 

Also I think they made it slightly easier to rotate towards another person should the need arise, both by means of it being thinner/lighter and because of the different type of skates underneath. (and the actually-single-cable-including-ethernet design)

 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Beautiful human-friendly design, plain and simple. 

The old iMacs were in no way ugly and that's not actually a benefit to them. I doubt a receptionist gives a damn about it at all, it's not their computer heh. All it has to do is function well and not impede their job and that makes a happy employee and computer user.

[saltycaramel]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Just because shit user serviceable windows laptops exist does not make higher performance non serviceable apple laptops better for the environment over serviceable ones.

 

A broken device that cannot be repaired is ewaste/landfill no matter how well it performed new.

 

So if in the span of say 8 years you need to buy 2 regular laptops instead of just 1 superfast super-battery-life Apple M1 laptop you say that doesn’t make a difference for the environment? Don’t think so.

 

Buy long-lasting Apple products, enjoy them for as many years as possible, then give them a second life via reselling them or give them back to Apple for recycling. Sounds like an environmentally friendly plan. If that sounds pricey, then you’re the one putting your wallet before the environment.

 

As for the hypothetical serviceable laptop that would catch up with Apple M1s: like the guys at iFixit, I’ll believe it when I see it. Let’s wait and see. Casting out the nines. 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

So if in the span of say 8 years you need to buy 2 regular laptops instead of just 1 superfast super-battery-life Apple M1 laptops you say that doesn’t make a difference for the environment? Don’t think so.

 

Buy long-lasting Apple products, enjoy them for as many years as possible, then give them a second life via reselling them or give them back to Apple for recycling. Sounds like an environmentally friendly plan. If it sounds pricey, then you’re the one putting your wallet before the environment.

 

As for the hypothetical serviceable laptop that would catch up with Apple M1s: like iFixit, I’ll believe it when I see it. Let’s wait and see. Casting out the nines. 

My sister is using a 14 year old Dell Inspiron Core 2 Duo, all it's had is a battery replacement.

 

Serviceability and device performance are two quite different discussions and in terms of device replacement the assessment of why it needs to be replaced has to be ascertained i.e. can it no longer perform for the tasks you need or did it fail. The first reason could happen to any device it's just a question of when, the second reason then can factor in ease of reparability and cost. If it was otherwise doing everything you needed and the storage device failed then all you'd need to do is spend $60 to get it functional again, unless it only has soldered NAND then it's essentially junk.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

So if in the span of say 8 years you need to buy 2 regular laptops instead of just 1 superfast super-battery-life Apple M1 laptops you say that doesn’t make a difference for the environment? Don’t think so.

 

Buy long-lasting Apple products, enjoy them for as many years as possible, then give them a second life via reselling them or give them back to Apple for recycling. Sounds like an environmentally friendly plan. If it sounds pricey, then you’re the one putting your wallet before the environment.

 

As for the hypothetical serviceable laptop that would catch up with Apple M1s: like iFixit, I’ll believe it when I see it. Let’s wait and see. Casting out the nines. 

Buy 1 superfast apple laptop and when it breaks and can't be repaired you have to A) buy another and B) now have one in landfill,  buy 1 super fast apple laptop that can be repaired when it breaks and you neither have to buy another nor have one landfill.  It's not a complex concept.

 

Buy 1 super fast apple laptop and when the battery wears out and you can replace it with a brand new battery off the shelf  then you have doubled the life of that laptop (regardless of brand or performance). 

 

You are being disingenuous in trying to compare company to company when the issue has nothing to do with that.

[saltycaramel]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

My sister is using a 14 year old Dell Inspiron Core 2 Duo, all it's had is a battery replacement.

 

Serviceability and device performance are two quite different discussions and in terms of device replacement the assessment of why it needs to be replaced has to be ascertained i.e. can it no longer perform for the tasks you need or did it fail. The first reason could happen to any device it's just a question of when, the second reason then can factor in ease of reparability and cost. If it was otherwise doing everything you needed and the storage device failed then all you'd need to do is spend $60 to get it function again, unless it only has soldered NAND then it's essentially junk.

 

I think 8-10 years is the reasonable time after which the “look, just give it back to the manufacturer for recycling” is fair. Anything more than that it’s “you’re on your own”, it’s an outlier and it’s unreasonable to demand design trade-offs (or “design choices” since someone here doesn’t like the word “trade-off”, but every design is a trade-off) that take into account lifetimes of 10+ years.

 

These laptops have pretty easily replaceable batteries.

 

And 10+ years into SSDs being mainstream, we’re not witnessing an epidemic of dying SSDs, both of the soldered and the non-soldered type. 

[saltycaramel]

21 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Buy 1 superfast apple laptop and when it breaks and can't be repaired 

 

Apple will happily repair it for an hefty price (or a small price if you pay them for their AppleCare+ insurance, which now in the recurring form can go on indefinitely).

 

Pay for the repair (or pay for AppleCare+), don’t be a cheapskate environment-destroyer. 

[saltycaramel]

The ship of (user-) servicing RAM and boot storage has sailed.

 

Integration is king. 

 

Socketed RAM/SSDs are kinda like shoeing horses after Ford launched the Model-T. 

 

Resistance is futile.

 

There we no pitchforks when it happened to smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, etc.

[Paul Thexton]

44 minutes ago, leadeater said:

My sister is using a 14 year old Dell Inspiron Core 2 Duo, all it's had is a battery replacement.

That's really cool. I guess the death of that Laptop is going to ultimately be determined by the life time (for security updates) of Windows 10, given that Windows 11 requires TPM?

 

Unless your sister runs / starts running Linux of course.