The last seven Mac quarters have now been the top seven quarters ever in the history of the Mac-- and 50% of Mac purchases were first timers

[Obioban]

2 minutes ago, Lord Bloobus said:

Heat was in reference to gaming, most people don't do long production work or processing on their machines period.

The M1 Air GPU loses ~5% performance when running the CPU and GPU at 100% load for an extended period. Presumably less if you don't run the CPU at 100% load, though I haven't found any numbers for that yet. Hardly seems like a deal breaker

 

And the MacBook Air is getting moved to the M2 in a couple months, which will likely be based on a 3nm process-- so should generate even less heat.

[Dracarris]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

None of Intel based Macs ever had such massive effect, because they were mostly very "meh" devices.

The combination of their screens, trackpads, sturdiness/general build quality, battery life and many other non-performance/computing-spec features has always set them apart.

Even Louis Rossmann admitted that during the unibody and retina periods, the best Windows laptop you could buy was a Macbook.

[BondiBlue]

5 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

general build quality

Not this one. Apple has struggled with some pretty major reliability issues over the past several years, ranging from disasters like the 2015 12" MacBook to the display cable issues in 2016-2017 MacBook Pros, and even some issues with the original Retina machines. In general MacBooks are built well, but there have been several models that just haven't held up well over the years. 

[RedRound2]

7 hours ago, Lord Bloobus said:

Wrong.

Cost and ease of use are king unless you have a specific need. Check my sig, we only have Macs deployed for creative works and everyone else has a dell. M1's have been plaguing us with issues related to thunderbolt displays and having to show people how to use them, and the macbook air prior to M1 was sluggish compared to new dell laptops.

And it does make a difference, they got total board control down to the nanometer and then used the most cutting edge designs they could. It's still only faster in basic use and specific applications to standard hardware that's 2 years old at this point.

EDIT: Also for the record, I want one for work/home but they don't mesh with my use cases so I bought a gaming laptop that covers all my bases. They're light and sip power, but lack SCCM/AD compatibility and we use a Windows based deployment environment and I need parity for that and troubleshooting. I have a Macbook Air from work that I use exclusively for Mac related issues and Configurator. If I'm not doing that it lives in my desk untouched.

This has nothing to do with most of my comment but whatever.

 

You do realize that the MacBook Air is the lowest end M1 device right? What Dell laptop are you comparing against? Context in this matters a lot. And its only basic and fast compared to two year old standard hardware? What? What are these "other" devices you are comparing it against?

[RedRound2]

6 hours ago, Obioban said:

The M1 Air GPU loses ~5% performance when running the CPU and GPU at 100% load for an extended period. Presumably less if you don't run the CPU at 100% load, though I haven't found any numbers for that yet. Hardly seems like a deal breaker

 

And the MacBook Air is getting moved to the M2 in a couple months, which will likely be based on a 3nm process-- so should generate even less heat.

3nm is a long way off. They will be either sticking with 5nm itself like previous gen, or using the new 5nm process which TSMC calls 4nm

[leadeater]

11 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Not this one. Apple has struggled with some pretty major reliability issues over the past several years, ranging from disasters like the 2015 12" MacBook to the display cable issues in 2016-2017 MacBook Pros, and even some issues with the original Retina machines. In general MacBooks are built well, but there have been several models that just haven't held up well over the years. 

But the chassis is Aluminium so it must be well built....

 

The classic confusion between quality of the parts and actual build quality of the product. Not that they were "bad" but they've had issues like you mention and some of them from rather poor choices which objectively excludes those from being labelled as "excellent build quality".

 

But I've in general always liked the MacBook Pro's, however not used many of the post 2019 models.

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, Lord Bloobus said:

EDIT: Also for the record, I want one for work/home but they don't mesh with my use cases so I bought a gaming laptop that covers all my bases. They're light and sip power, but lack SCCM/AD compatibility and we use a Windows based deployment environment and I need parity for that and troubleshooting. I have a Macbook Air from work that I use exclusively for Mac related issues and Configurator. If I'm not doing that it lives in my desk untouched.

Have you looked in to using something like Jamf Pro? That'll give you parity to SCCM for your Mac fleet. And yes you can run Jamf Pro on a Windows server, or Linux.

[BondiBlue]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

But the chassis is Aluminium so it must be well built....

 

The classic confusion between quality of the parts parts and actual build quality of the product. Not that they were "bad" but they've had issues like you mention and some of them from rather poor choices which objectively excludes those from being labelled as "excellent build quality".

 

But I've in general always liked the MacBook Pro's, however not used many of the post 2019 models.

Technically the build quality itself isn't bad overall, but there have been certain aspects that make various models undesirable. Butterfly keyboards, staingate, display flex cables, logic board failures, 2016/2017 13" SSD failures, 2011 Radeon dGPU failures, I could go on and on. 

 

Thankfully Apple seems to be trying to rectify some of these issues. They use the Magic Keyboard in the MacBook Pro, for example. The butterfly keyboard was so unreliable for me that Apple ended up giving me a brand new 2020 M1 MBP as a replacement for my 2017 MBP. A laptop that cost as much as that 2017 MBP did should not break four times in a single calendar year, but it did. 

[kuddlesworth9419]

Shame Mac OS is dog shit.

[Lightwreather]

3 minutes ago, kuddlesworth9419 said:

Shame Mac OS is dog shit.

Well, OS experience is subjective so I doubt that a blanket stement like that is appropos. I understand it might not be for you (no OS is perfect for everyone), but in my experience it's fine (with the exception of start ups of monterey on HDDs, those are atrocious)

[pythonmegapixel]

13 minutes ago, kuddlesworth9419 said:

Shame Mac OS is dog shit.

Clearly you've never seen Windows then!

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Clearly you've never seen Windows then!

I shouldn't find this funny but I do.

 

I don't like being kicked in the shins (Mac OS) but I don't find a punch to the arm (Windows) much of a problem.

[leadeater]

15 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Are you talking about Apple computers? They only sell one computer without a fan, and that's the lowest end laptop they offer. All of their other laptops and desktops have at least one fan, and thermals have been very strong for most Apple Silicon machines. 

And it's a non issue for that device, highly important factor. When is the cooling solution on a fanless product going to fail? Never? Should be rather close to that.

[leadeater]

15 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

Also we have already been through this a billion times on this forum about how one node smaller than rest of industry cannot account for most of the performance gains from Apple Silicon chips. Its been proven and pointed out again and again, yet people still cling to it. And can you please tell me about a computer thats equivalent to MacBook Air and Mac mini that beat it (dont bring up gaming or some nonsense like that)

Nah, people just continue to use evidence in ways that don't actually prove this. See the problem with using certain application benchmarks to show how much better the M1 is compared to X or Y product or X + Y products is you're actually showing how much better an implementation is, not how much ahead the M1 is in CPU archecture or GPU architecture specifically, and that's where you fall afoul of people like myself when you make claims that tie in to claims about those specific aspects being so much better than competing options in the market.

 

What, how and why is very important. It's all in interpretation, that's why when you drill down to specific code path tests the huge gains you see in broad view application benchmarks aren't there, as in aren't as large and are explained by node advantages and silicon die size.

 

That's why all angels matter and trying to be as objective as possible, and understanding of these elements. As I've said before such an equivalent SoC paired with software that will actually utilize it just isn't all that likely on the PC platform. Maybe, just maybe, it could happen now that Intel is getting more in to the GPU market but one of the missing key elements will still be there and that is software.

 

If Apple really does keep pulling huge amounts of professionals and large companies over to their products and Mac OS then at some point it'll have to be addressed, but we'll just have to wait and see on that one.

[pythonmegapixel]

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I shouldn't find this funny but I do.

 

I don't like being kicked in the shins (Mac OS) but I don't find a punch to the arm (Windows) much of a problem.

To be fair, that comment was fairly tounge-in-cheek.

 

On balance I'd probably rather put my shin pads on and use a Mac, but I think that's a simple matter of familiarity. I don't think either is particularly amazing. I use arch btw

[Paul Thexton]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

And yes you can run Jamf Pro on a Windows server, or Linux.

I’m not in a position to comment on the difference in pricing between self hosted and jamf cloud, but I can say jamf cloud takes away the pain of having to manage, maintain and upgrade your own instance(s)

[Paul Thexton]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

And it's a non issue for that device, highly important factor. When is the cooling solution on a fanless product going to fail? Never? Should be rather close to that.

Maybe eventually it might benefit from new thermal compound? 

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

I’m not in a position to comment on the difference in pricing between self hosted and jamf cloud, but I can say jamf cloud takes away the pain of having to manage, maintain and upgrade your own instance(s)

huh how long has Jamf Cloud been a thing? Been out of that for a few years now.

[Paul Thexton]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

huh how long has Jamf Cloud been a thing? Been out of that for a few years now.

I think 2019 but don’t quote me on that

[Paul Thexton]

Also, if you’re managing Macs and you want to deploy security software that requires things like FDA enabled, or system extensions to be automatically approved, you’re going to make your own life easier by using an MDM to distribute configuration profiles rather than relying on manual IT device setup or relying on the end user to follow instructions properly (you can even use InTune but I’m not sure on feature parity)

 

MDM will also let you bootstrap FileVault recovery keys so you can work around data recovery in the event of forgetting passwords or fired employees etc.

[Dracarris]

14 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Not this one. Apple has struggled with some pretty major reliability issues over the past several years, ranging from disasters like the 2015 12" MacBook to the display cable issues in 2016-2017 MacBook Pros, and even some issues with the original Retina machines. In general MacBooks are built well, but there have been several models that just haven't held up well over the years. 

I wasn‘t referring to this aspect of build quality, a bit hard to explain what I mean in English. However these for sure are actual issues, I have been plagued with the butterfly issue, though received a full bottom case replacment free of charge, including factory-new surfaces, a fresh battery, trackpad and speakers.

[Spotty]

23 hours ago, Obioban said:

Mac sales have been significantly increasing since Apple Silicon started shipping. 
 

My thoughts

I thought this was interesting because it really shows that normal people are grokking, to some degree, the benefits of Apple Silicon.

I wonder how much of these increased sales over the last 7 quarters is actually because of Apple silicon. The M1 Macbook released in November 2020 when the last 7 quarters would go back to July 2020 so they were already seeing 'record' laptop sales prior to the M1 release.

 

My theory for why the last 2 years have been the best 7 quarters for Apple would be because of COVID restrictions and the massive global shift towards work & school from home resulting in more people purchasing new computers. Suddenly a lot of people were in the market for a new computer to allow them to work or school from home where that demand might not have existed to anywhere near the same degree previously. I would have been absolutely astonished if Apple weren't selling more laptops over the last 2 years than they ever had before.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Spotty

[Paul Thexton]

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I wonder how much of these increased sales over the last 7 quarters is actually because of Apple silicon.

Probably impossible to answer but I think the generally favourable reviews of M1 can’t have harmed Apple’s sales.

 

For me as a developer (admittedly I currently write Mac software for a living but was a Mac user at home when developing for Linux and Windows) my 14” M1Max is honestly an excellent, albeit admittedly “premium priced” laptop.

 

Aside from user upgradeable storage which is a given (I don’t accept any excuse why we can’t have that), there’s really only two other things that could make it better for me, one of which Apple publicly refuse to do (FaceID), and the other I just don’t expect to ever happen (AAA gaming, even if it’s only 1080p)

 

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

I wonder how much of these increased sales over the last 7 quarters is actually because of Apple silicon. The M1 Macbook released in November 2020 when the last 7 quarters would go back to July 2020 so they were already seeing 'record' laptop sales prior to the M1 release.

 

My theory for why the last 2 years have been the best 7 quarters for Apple would be because of COVID restrictions and the massive global shift towards work & school from home resulting in more people purchasing new computers. Suddenly a lot of people were in the market for a new computer to allow them to work or school from home where that demand might not have existed to anywhere near the same degree previously. I would have been absolutely astonished if Apple weren't selling more laptops over the last 2 years than they ever had before.

And the chip shortage created a perfect storm where the Apple devices were sometimes the only device you could buy. People quickly forget that the chip shortage was already a problem BEFORE Covid, and if you had a business you were already had like a 6 month lead time on buying from Dell or HP. If you needed it now, you could quite literately have your purchasing department buy an Apple Computer before you could get a Dell.

 

Hell some of the Dell units I deployed at the beginning of the pandemic were not the "right model" for the business they were models clearly intended for like a military government department (Eg bluetooth disabled, no cameras, ME disabled, smartcard slot active) where most hardware we got from Dell didn't have these things disabled. 

 

Like several times the person I was doing the work for asked if they could just grab something from a store because they needed "a laptop, immediately" and I had to say "no, that's not how this works." So when people lost a laptop or had one stolen (both of these happened in the same year) I had to go back through the stuff we had previously deployed and give these users 2-3 year old equipment.

 

When going through the stores during the pandemic, often the highest power thing you could get was a 2 year old laptop with a 8th gen CPU and a GTX 1050Ti. The entire high end was unavailable, from everyone except Apple. Apple found itself in a position where even it's worst device was better than every Wintel device you could still get (which only iGPU-only laptops were the most available thing. There were no desktops with dGPU's from anyone unless you wanted to wait months.)

 

 

[Montana One-Six]

21 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

The general population largely seems to be actually be aware about Apple Silicon chips due to the strides it has made in the industry. 

I don't think so.

 

I don't know many that use Mac but those I know are all work in some sort of creative field. Almost all of them use it because it has an Apple on it and nothing else. I recently had a conversation with some I know who study architecture and use macbooks. They were complaining that their macs got sluggish and unresponsive when creating bigger 3D models. It turned out the RAM on those machines was almost entirely used up by the model. Since the memory is soldered on to the motherboard, they had to buy a new macbook. So they bought a new macbook and when I asked if it is the new M1 model they didn't know but they could tell me that it has more RAM than their previous one. So yeah I highly doubt that the average Mac user actually knows let alone cares. As long as it has an Apple on it they are fine with it.