Base model Apple M2 MacBook Pro SSD Up To 50% slower than M1 MacBook Pro SSD | Half the NAND chips, half the speed

[igormp]

16 minutes ago, Obioban said:

If you're using Chrome, 8gb is not enough. 16gb is borderline, if you're using Chrome.

Depends on the usage. For me? Sure 8gb won't cut it, but for many people I know who don't tend to keep more than 10 tabs open at once it works flawlessly. Heck, even chromebooks with 2~4gb of ram and zswap do fine for most people.

 

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Apart from that macOS does a better job at managing resources and the memory compression helps during actual every-day use cases.

Citation needed. I dare to say that my linux box does it even better 

 

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

And why you would want to use Chrome instead of the much better optimized and integrated Safari is a bit beyond me, but whatever, choices, and the freedom to chose in a suboptimal way.

Because Safari is slower and breaks tons of stuff, since it still lags behind modern standards adoption. I couldn't give a crap about that integration if it means my stuff won't work or is slower.

 

If you want proof of that, here's a nice test on web standards which tracks bugs on browsers:

https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&aligned

 

And I just did a quick test on speedometer, it seems that chrome indeed is faster, even if by a small margin (and with less variance too and with way more extensions):

[Dracarris]

4 minutes ago, igormp said:

Because Safari is slower and breaks tons of stuff, since it still lags behind modern standards adoption. I couldn't give a crap about that integration if it means my stuff won't work or is slower.

Interesting. I have encountered literally zero problems with it, literally every website I have accessed over the past 10 years or so worked flawlessly.

 

But sure that bug graph is probably very important in everyday usage and the few % added speed are worth all the GBs of memory it requires.

[igormp]

10 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Interesting. I have encountered literally zero problems with it, literally every website I have accessed over the past 10 years or so worked flawlessly.

 

But sure that bug graph is probably very important in everyday usage and the few % added speed are worth all the GBs of memory it requires.

In my experience, safari consumes just a tad bit less than chrome, not worth the effort with my apps not working (such as jira, notion, excalidraw, anything that requires bluetooth, the web version of vscode, all of those are somewhat broken on safari). The only point where safari is indeed way better is battery consumption, but that becomes moot if I can't even get my stuff to work properly.

 

But sure, apple fanboy, ignore all the points I mentioned just because it's not important for you and keep praising the company you love! For sure the millions of users of the apps I mentioned don't find those bugs important at all, and do keep telling us how the way you use your PC is the optimal way whereas any other usage is suboptimal.

 

Irony apart, you could defend the HW itself and I'd probably agree with you (heck, I'd love a M1 Pro with linux, but it's not really daily-driven ready yet), but MacOS has so many things wrong, and Safari gives the impression that apple is just an inch away from throwing into the trash by how neglected it is. Don't believe me? Then read some arguments from people who have to deal with it:

https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/

(to be fair, Safari has managed to improve their HTML/CSS compatibility a lot this year, it's pretty close to chrome and better than firefox bit a small margin: https://wpt.fyi/compat2021?feature=summary&stable)

 

Having a browser that only updates every once in a year or so, takes 3~5 years do adopt standards and takes almost decades to fix bugs seems far from optimal for me.

[Dracarris]

2 hours ago, igormp said:

In my experience, safari consumes just a tad bit less than chrome, not worth the effort with my apps not working (such as jira, notion, excalidraw, anything that requires bluetooth, the web version of vscode, all of those are somewhat broken on safari). The only point where safari is indeed way better is battery consumption, but that becomes moot if I can't even get my stuff to work properly.

I don't know, battery consumption and thereby heat output are quite important to me. But then again I use Safari for browsing and not as app replacements. For example VSCode I simply use as a proper app (installed on the disk), which works quite nicely on macOS. But to each their own.

[igormp]

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

thereby heat output are quite important to me

Fun fact, heat output on safari is worse than chrome, for some reason. Maybe race to idle?

 

3 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

For example VSCode I simply use as a proper app (installed on the disk), which works quite nicely on macOS

So do I, but the VSCode installed on the Mac I'm using has its livesharing function broken, so whenever I need to pair with someone all I'm left with is the browser version. I wouldn't be using it if I hadn't to (same goes to the mac tho).

Apart from your nitpicking with a single app that I mentioned, the others have no desktop counterpart and are browser only, so again, no option there.

[LAwLz]

I feel like this thread is an example of what happens when people just watch Youtubers make flashy videos constantly hyping up faster and more expensive things.

At some point things loses basis in reality and people just want higher numbers, regardless of what those numbers mean in practical terms. 

 

 

Does the M2 base model Macbook Pro have a slower drive than the old one? Yes.

Is it better to have a faster SSD? Yes.

Does it actually matter? Not really. Especially not for the people the device is aimed at.

 

 

  

3 hours ago, Obioban said:

If you're using Chrome, 8gb is not enough. 16gb is borderline, if you're using Chrome.

8GB is more than enough for most people using Chrome.

People really need to stop overestimating how much RAM they need.

[igormp]

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

8GB is more than enough for most people using Chrome.

People really need to stop overestimating how much RAM they need.

How dare you, we're in a gamer forum with many gamers who absolutely need 16gb+ of ram for their minecraft gameplays along with forum browsing on chrome. If 8gb isn't enough for them, for sure it isn't for anyone else.

Don't you play games? Too bad, weirdo, PCs with GPUs were made solely for games, get outta here.

 

 

(/s)

[LAwLz]

32 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

8GB is more than enough for most people using Chrome.

People really need to stop overestimating how much RAM they need.

To add to this, I just tested it out.

 

Clean install of Windows, clean install of Chrome.

I opened the 25 most visited websites in the US (according to this site, I skipped over microsoftonline), all in a new tab (so 25 tabs open with websites fully loaded).

Chrome is using 1.4GB of RAM...

 

I opened the 40 most popular websites and the memory usage jumped up to 2.4GB, mostly because sites like Twitch and Fox News are apparently very bloated (uses over 100MB of RAM each, while other sites are hovering around 50MB).

 

 

My VM with 8GB of RAM that currently has the top 40 websites open in Chrome is currently sitting at 6.1GB of memory used, but 2GB of that is just cached stuff that could potentially be freed up.

In other words, even a PC with 4GB of RAM could run Chrome and keep ~40 tabs open without running into memory issues. My guess is that most people do not keep 40 active tabs open either. Even if you are one of those people who never close your tabs, after a while Chrome will expunge them from memory due to inactivity. I wouldn't be surprised if even tab hoarders only have like 10 active tabs.

 

Now, I am not saying that a computer with 4GB of memory would be pleasant to use for everyone, but it is in fact more than enough for a large portion of people. 8GB is plenty for most people. This idea that you need 16GB of RAM, even in gaming rigs, is not really true. It probably stems from people buying more RAM than they need, then looking in the task manager and seeing let's say 10GB of RAM used, without realizing how Windows manages memory.

 

 

The idea that you need 16GB of memory just to browse the Internet using Chrome is quite frankly ridiculous.

[Obioban]

https://chromeisbad.com/

[Dracarris]

54 minutes ago, igormp said:

How dare you, we're in a gamer forum with many gamers who absolutely need 16gb+ of ram for their minecraft gameplays along with forum browsing on chrome. If 8gb isn't enough for them, for sure it isn't for anyone else.

Don't you play games? Too bad, weirdo, PCs with GPUs were made solely for games, get outta here.

Wasn‘t there even an LTT video that showed 8GB is enough for most folks even on x86 desktop? Sure I wouldn‘t buy any PC with 8GB especially if it‘s non-upgradeable but still.

1 hour ago, igormp said:

Fun fact, heat output on safari is worse than chrome, for some reason. Maybe race to idle?

Kinda would contradict the lower battery consumption?

1 hour ago, igormp said:

So do I, but the VSCode installed on the Mac I'm using has its livesharing function broken,

well that blows I though the days where MS creates crippled Mac versions (Cough Office cough) are over.

[igormp]

7 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Kinda would contradict the lower battery consumption?

Not if it's a race to idle thing, where it tries to use all of the available resources (thus heating up the device) in order to get it done quickly then go back to idle (with lower power consumption).

 

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

well that blows I though the days where MS creates crippled Mac versions (Cough Office cough) are over.

Not sure if that's a MS issue since my other peers with Macs have it running fine, it's probably something wrong with my installation that I couldn't manage to repair, nor I'm willing to reinstall it since I won't be using this mac for much longer (hopefully). 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

My guess is that most people do not keep 40 active tabs open either.

Damn I feel targeted, I almost never have less than 40 open 

 

Chrome Tab Anonymous membership confirmed 

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, igormp said:

How dare you, we're in a gamer forum with many gamers who absolutely need 16gb+ of ram for their minecraft gameplays along with forum browsing on chrome. If 8gb isn't enough for them, for sure it isn't for anyone else.

 

 

 

(/s)

To be fair I think 16GB of ram should be the minimum for any system, especially one over $1,000USD, and I would guess a lot of power users have more than a few chrome tabs open lol.

1 hour ago, Obioban said:

https://chromeisbad.com/

Chrome isn't that bad, it definitely isn't that much of a resource hog anymore but I still prefer Firefox, Intel macs just have garbage cooling so even Chrome causes performance issues.

[igormp]

59 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

To be fair I think 16GB of ram should be the minimum for any system, especially one over $1,000USD

On systems above $1k? Sure thing, however it's not uncommon to see such "premium" laptops starting with 8gb only, even if they're $1k+

 

As for systems bellow that range, specially budget ones, I disagree. 4gb for sure shouldn't be a thing anymore, but 8gb is still fine for most regular users.

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

and I would guess a lot of power users have more than a few chrome tabs open lol.

Yeah, for sure, but power users aren't the norm, and they should know better what they need anyway.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

Chrome isn't that bad, it definitely isn't that much of a resource hog anymore but I still prefer Firefox, Intel macs just have garbage cooling so even Chrome causes performance issues.

The website is about a specific bug that seems to happen only on MacOS, with a linked issue on the chromium bug tracker that so far has no resolution yet (even though apparently a google employee really tried to debug this issue).

[Dracarris]

3 hours ago, igormp said:

Not if it's a race to idle thing, where it tries to use all of the available resources (thus heating up the device) in order to get it done quickly then go back to idle (with lower power consumption).

Those race faces consume a disproportional amount of additional energy. Power at max. frequency at a given operating voltage increases by the third power (in dependency of voltage) (and during race faces the CPU boosts and therefore needs to increase voltage). Things might be a bit more nuanced in practice with complex workloads but I doubt this strategy will lead to overall lower energy consumed.

[HenrySalayne]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Does the M2 base model Macbook Pro have a slower drive than the old one? Yes.

Is it better to have a faster SSD? Yes.

Does it actually matter? Not really. Especially not for the people the device is aimed at.

The M2 Macbook Pro is just worse compared to its predecessor. It launched 1.5 years later, has a slightly faster CPU, an insufficient amount of RAM for 2022, an insufficient amount of RAM bandwidth, an insufficient amount of storage for 2022 and half the storage bandwidth of it's predecessor. The new M2 chip cannot be utilized because the entire system is held back by other restrictions. And they even increased the price on the European market quite drastically.

And yet people are celebrating and cheering for what their evil Apple overlords created. Since when is it ok to bump up the price and deliver less? Since when do we accept pointless and unbalanced configurations which doesn't make any sense? Combining M2 with just 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage in a device with zero upgrade-ability is just a waste of resources. Like this one friend, running a 12900KS, with a single stick of RAM and a 1650 as his gaming rig.

So please stop defending Apple for their crappy behaviour. It's already enough Microsoft pulls this kind of bulls**t with their Surface line-up.

[igormp]

46 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Those race faces consume a disproportional amount of additional energy. Power at max. frequency at a given operating voltage increases by the third power (in dependency of voltage) (and during race faces the CPU boosts and therefore needs to increase voltage). Things might be a bit more nuanced in practice with complex workloads but I doubt this strategy will lead to overall lower energy consumed.

Eh, idk, that's the only reason that I can think of why safari makes the laptop hotter even though it consumes less battery life. Here's a graph of that btw:

 

But touching in a specific point that  you said:

48 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Power at max. frequency at a given operating voltage increases by the third power (in dependency of voltage) (and during race faces the CPU boosts and therefore needs to increase voltage).

Actually, modern CPUs are really efficient and can increase their clock speeds almost linearly with voltage. The problem comes when you get close to the max/turbo clocks, then the voltage increase ends up being quadratic (or worse). 

[LAwLz]

58 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

The M2 Macbook Pro is just worse compared to its predecessor. It launched 1.5 years later, has a slightly faster CPU, an insufficient amount of RAM for 2022, an insufficient amount of RAM bandwidth, an insufficient amount of storage for 2022 and half the storage bandwidth of it's predecessor. The new M2 chip cannot be utilized because the entire system is held back by other restrictions. And they even increased the price on the European market quite drastically.

And yet people are celebrating and cheering for what their evil Apple overlords created. Since when is it ok to bump up the price and deliver less? Since when do we accept pointless and unbalanced configurations which doesn't make any sense? Combining M2 with just 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage in a device with zero upgrade-ability is just a waste of resources. Like this one friend, running a 12900KS, with a single stick of RAM and a 1650 as his gaming rig.

So please stop defending Apple for their crappy behaviour. It's already enough Microsoft pulls this kind of bulls**t with their Surface line-up.

None of that has anything to do with what I said. I said the speed of the SSD in the 256GB model is fine. It does not really need to be any faster. It would be good if it was, but in practice it doesn't matter. It seems like you are unable to handle someone not constantly shitting on Apple and as a result you had to bring up a bunch of things I never mentioned or talked about.

 

I get it, you hate Apple. But a lot of stuff you are saying is complete and utter bullshit. It's okay to dislike Apple, but if you are going to criticise them at least do it for the proper reasons. Not only are you bringing up things I never mentioned, but I also think you are just flat out wrong about a lot of things.

• 8GB of RAM is fine for plenty of people. It depends on your workload. Not everyone is running tasks that requires a lot of memory, and for those people 8GB is enough. It might not be enough for you, but not everyone does the same things as you. Besides, you can get more if you want.
• The M2 does NOT have "insufficient amount of RAM bandwidth". If anything, the M2 has a ridiculous amount of RAM bandwidth. If you think it is "insufficient" then I'd love to know what you think is sufficient. Unless you got DDR5, you probably don't even have half the memory bandwidth of the M2.
• I don't necessarily think 256GB is "insufficient". I only use ~160GB on my work PC. 256GB would be enough for my use case. I like having more, but I really don't need it. You might need more, but not everyone does the same things you do. Besides, you can get more if you want.
• It's only 50% slower in certain situations, and even in those situations it doesn't really matter because it is still fast enough for what people will use it for. 
• I don't think you can say the M2 is being "held back". It entirely depends on which config you get and what you use it for.
• You might not have noticed this, buy A LOT of things have gone up in price. It is not exactly exclusive to Apple, and probably not something they wanted to do. It's just a fact of life that anything electronics related will be expensive these days. Besides, you can still buy the old M1 Macbook if you want.

 

You seem to be irrationally mad about having the option to buy something you don't like, and I don't really get why. You have not lost anything. You have just gained more choice. Sure, YOU might not like the new choice as much as the old one, but if that's the case just get the old one.

 

 

I am going to defend Apple, and any company for that matter, when I see people making stupid arguments for why they are "evil" or bad. Me countering some bad argument does not mean I am "celebrating" or "cheering" on that product though. It just means I disagree with that particular statement regarding the product. If you call the M2 Macbook Pro bad then I won't bat an eye. I think it seems bad too. I'd much rather get the M2 Macbook Air. It seems like a way better buy, or maybe the M1 Pro Macbook Pro. But I will defend the M2 Macbook Pro if people are hating on it for (what in my opinion) stupid reasons.

 

Also, I really don't see the people "celebrating" that you are talking about. Pretty much everyone I have seen are saying the M2 Macbook Pro is a bad buy. Just because people have a slightly more nuanced view of things and will defend certain aspects of it, like the SSD speed, does not mean those same people are "celebrating and cheering" on Apple. 

 

I strongly advice you try and see that the world is not black and white. The world is full of nuance. Something can be good in some aspects, alright in some, and bad in other aspects. It doesn't all have to be the best thing ever made, or the worst thing ever.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

The M2 Macbook Pro is just worse compared to its predecessor. It launched 1.5 years later, has a slightly faster CPU, an insufficient amount of RAM for 2022, an insufficient amount of RAM bandwidth, an insufficient amount of storage for 2022 and half the storage bandwidth of it's predecessor. The new M2 chip cannot be utilized because the entire system is held back by other restrictions. And they even increased the price on the European market quite drastically.

And yet people are celebrating and cheering for what their evil Apple overlords created. Since when is it ok to bump up the price and deliver less? Since when do we accept pointless and unbalanced configurations which doesn't make any sense? Combining M2 with just 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage in a device with zero upgrade-ability is just a waste of resources. Like this one friend, running a 12900KS, with a single stick of RAM and a 1650 as his gaming rig.

So please stop defending Apple for their crappy behaviour. It's already enough Microsoft pulls this kind of bulls**t with their Surface line-up.

Threads like these has me convinced apple fans will defend their favorite company for anything, having a faster SOC is rather pointless when the storage will hold back any demanding tasks with this laptop. An unbalanced configuration might be fine for some people now, but it really does feel wasteful because it gets those users to buy a new laptop sooner than they might need to as 8GB ram and 256GB storage is such a bare minimum, which is probably intentional considering Apple's behavior with pushing users to buy new products every year, and making the SSD impossible to replace is another thing I have a strong dislike for.

23 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I get it, you hate Apple. But a lot of stuff you are saying is complete and utter bullshit. It's okay to dislike Apple, but if you are going to criticise them at least do it for the proper reasons. Not only are you bringing up things I never mentioned, but I also think you are just flat out wrong about a lot of things.

• 8GB of RAM is fine for plenty of people. It depends on your workload. Not everyone is running tasks that requires a lot of memory, and for those people 8GB is enough. It might not be enough for you, but not everyone does the same things as you. Besides, you can get more if you want.
• The M2 does NOT have "insufficient amount of RAM bandwidth". If anything, the M2 has a ridiculous amount of RAM bandwidth. If you think it is "insufficient" then I'd love to know what you think is sufficient. Unless you got DDR5, you probably don't even have half the memory bandwidth of the M2.
• I don't necessarily think 256GB is "insufficient". I only use ~160GB on my work PC. 256GB would be enough for my use case. I like having more, but I really don't need it. You might need more, but not everyone does the same things you do. Besides, you can get more if you want.
• It's only 50% slower in certain situations, and even in those situations it doesn't really matter because it is still fast enough for what people will use it for. 
• I don't think you can say the M2 is being "held back". It entirely depends on which config you get and what you use it for.
• You might not have noticed this, buy A LOT of things have gone up in price. It is not exactly exclusive to Apple, and probably not something they wanted to do. It's just a fact of life that anything electronics related will be expensive these days. Besides, you can still buy the old M1 Macbook if you want.

And we get you love apple, why are you defending such a bad product? People are criticizing them for proper reasons, the storage is pitifully slow for a $1,300 laptop which all the apple defense force here seems to conveniently ignore, while just saying "oh for the intended market its fine" except this laptop has the "pro" naming on it, and it would make a lot more sense as a product if it were just called a macbook and aimed at the average apple consumer.

1. If 8GB is "fine" for those users then they don't need a $1,300 macbook, people have been saying just stick to first party apple apps, so they would be fine with a used M1 macbook air, or probably a used intel mac.

2. the RAM bandwidth only helps so much when the base only has 8GB of ram, and the limitation is going to be the SSD in a workload which would actually take advantage of the faster M2 SOC.

3. IMO a 256GB is really the bare minimum now for anything except a work PC where you might be transferring over to a server or keeping things in the cloud.

3. Saying its "only" 50% slower is a weird statement, its slower than a lot of $50 M.2 SSD's, yet apple wants $200 for the 512GB storage upgrade.

4. The M2 would be a pointless purchase for anyone who wants to use the system to its fullest, the SSD would definitely hold it back. But I get it the base pro machine is always for the "poor" apple users, and a significant price increase for a more useable system isn't anything new.

5. I find it kind of weird when people defend the margins apple makes, they already have a huge margin as it is with their own SOC and soldered in everything, the M2 price hike is just getting even more greedy.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, igormp said:

Eh, idk, that's the only reason that I can think of why safari makes the laptop hotter even though it consumes less battery life. Here's a graph of that btw:

Those look nice, did you make them yourself? What do the individual lines refer to?

1 hour ago, igormp said:

Actually, modern CPUs are really efficient and can increase their clock speeds almost linearly with voltage.

That's a fundamental property of CMOS circuits that has always been true. This is however not the issue. Dynamic (switching) power per MHz increases quadratically with voltage, so the resulting dynamic power at max frequency scales with the third power (V^1 from max freq x V^2 from dynamic power per MHz). And is exactly the reason why the turbo area is so taxing on power consumption. The scaling is very much true before, but the absolute differences are way smaller because, well, third power.

[LAwLz]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Threads like these has me convinced apple fans will defend their favorite company for anything, having a faster SOC is rather pointless when the storage will hold back any demanding tasks with this laptop.

In what "demanding tasks" will the storage hold back the M2?

Image editing? DAW? Video encoding? Gaming? CAD? Compiling? None of those generally require a lot of bandwidth and are what I would normally consider "demanding tasks".

 

Once we start talking about these workloads that require a lot of fast data access, like databases, then the 256GB of storage will most likely be the limiting factor, not the speed itself. So if you are going to run those workloads then get a higher storage option. Simple, right?

 

 

6 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

And we get you love apple

I don't. Far from it.

 

 

6 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

why are you defending such a bad product?

I am not. In the same post you are quoting I said the M2 Macbook Pro seems like a bad product and I would not get it. I would rather get the M2 Macbook Air if I were to get a Mac, which I am not. Just because I am debunking bullshit arguments being thrown at a product does not mean I like it. If you are going to criticize a product then at least do so for valid reasons. Not imaginary problems that are irrelevant.

 

9 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

People are criticizing them for proper reasons

No they aren't... At least not the people I am responding to. Do you honestly think "the RAM bandwidth is slow" is a valid reason? Let me remind you that a 5950X with the highest end DDR4 memory that it supports will not even have half the memory bandwidth of the M2.

 

13 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

the storage is pitifully slow for a $1,300 laptop which all the apple defense force here seems to conveniently ignore

It's not "pitifully slow". It does 1.4GB/s sequential writes and 1.4GB/s sequential reads.

Hell, we only know the sequential read and write speeds, and while those are not exactly "top of the line", they are way faster than necessary for most people. Besides, sequential read and write speeds are only a small part of the equation. What if we discover that the MacBook Pro is really good at low queue depths? Are you still going to say it is "pitifully slow" even if it matches or outperforms the top of the line SSDs in other aspects?

 

 

21 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

while just saying "oh for the intended market its fine" except this laptop has the "pro" naming on it

Who the fuck cares if it has "pro" in the name? 

My network card has the word "killer" in the name, but I don't expect it to actually murder people.  Razer has a laptop called the "blade", but I don't exact to be able to use it in a sword fight. Logitech has a mouse called "Lightspeed", but I don't expect the mouse to hold up to traveling at ~300,000 km per second.

 

What even does "pro" entail in your mind? Professional? Well I am a professional, and the baseline MacBook Pro would be more than enough for my work. I mainly just use a web browser with ~5 tabs open at any time, or a terminal window for SSH. I could make due with like 4GB of RAM, a dual core processor and 50GB of storage. Am I not a "pro" user?

 

I feel like you are making a lot of assumptions based on a product name which is quite honestly meaningless. 

 

29 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

1. If 8GB is "fine" for those users then they don't need a $1,300 macbook, people have been saying just stick to first party apple apps, so they would be fine with a used M1 macbook air, or probably a used intel mac.

Is this suppose to be a counter argument to something I said? Because it does not really counter anything I said. If anything, you are just agreeing with me. 

 

30 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

2. the RAM bandwidth only helps so much when the base only has 8GB of ram, and the limitation is going to be the SSD in a workload which would actually take advantage of the faster M2 SOC.

Memory bandwidth and memory capacity are two different things used for different purposes. One does not necessarily limit the other.

You are being rather vague when talking about the M2 being "held back". What specific workloads are you talking about here, where the SSD will hold back the M2? I mentioned several workloads I would consider "pro workloads" earlier and none of those will, in general, be bound by storage performance.

 

33 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

3. IMO a 256GB is really the bare minimum now for anything except a work PC where you might be transferring over to a server or keeping things in the cloud.

So you agree that 256GB is the minimum? Then why are you mad at Apple when they are offering 256GB as the minimum?

And if you are going to talk about how it has "pro" in the name then why are you suddenly going "well, it will only work in professional workplaces where they got files stored remotely"? You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth here.

You can't say "it's not a pro machine because it only has 256GB of storage" and then also go "only pros will be able to make due with 256GB of storage".

 

 

35 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

3. Saying its "only" 50% slower is a weird statement, its slower than a lot of $50 M.2 SSD's, yet apple wants $200 for the 512GB storage upgrade.

Is it really slower than those drives? Or is it slower in one particular test but we don't know about the other ~10 or so metrics that are relevant for an SSD's speed?

Please keep in mind that sequential read and write speeds are about the most meaningless performance measurement of an SSD in general. Low queue depth read speeds are far more important to most users, including you and me, and I haven't been able to find those metrics yet.

 

 

42 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

4. The M2 would be a pointless purchase for anyone who wants to use the system to its fullest, the SSD would definitely hold it back. But I get it the base pro machine is always for the "poor" apple users, and a significant price increase for a more useable system isn't anything new.

I feel like you are making very broad statements that only apple in certain situations, to certain configurations. For example you say "M2" but what you actually mean is "256GB version of the M2 MacBook Pro".

Also, like I have said several times, I think the 256GB model is perfectly usable for a large portion of people. Not everyone needs more than 256GB of local storage, or more than 8GB of RAM. I would argue most people don't. If you are in the group of people who do need more, just get the higher end model.

 

 

45 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

5. I find it kind of weird when people defend the margins apple makes, they already have a huge margin as it is with their own SOC and soldered in everything, the M2 price hike is just getting even more greedy.

Who here is defending Apple's margins?

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Just because people have a slightly more nuanced view of things and will defend certain aspects of it, like the SSD speed, does not mean those same people are "celebrating and cheering" on Apple. 

I, of all people, basically got called an Apple fan for saying the SSD is fine and Apples' NPU is better than everyone else's. I thought that was quite funny. I'm very sure I am not known for positive praise of Apple 

[igormp]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Those look nice, did you make them yourself? What do the individual lines refer to?

Nope, got it from here: https://www.flotato.com/post/memory-chrome-safari-flotato

 

Keep in mind that the rest of the test is not valid, as the author mentioned at the top.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

I, of all people, basically got called an Apple fan for saying the SSD is fine and Apples' NPU is better than everyone else's. I thought that was quite funny. I'm very sure I am not known for positive praise of Apple 

If you're not a hater or a lover, haters/lover will make sure to label you as their opposite.

[Brian McKee]

The fact that a 256GB capacity is even available in 2022 is a joke in of itself. Crap speed on an unusable amount of space just doesn't matter.

 

The only form 256GB ssds should come in is SATA for use in a bootdrive in a super budget pc or as an upgrade to grandma's 10 year old dell.

[RedRound2]

What a shit show of pointless flame wars, by the people who weren't going to anyways even get the new MacBook Pro. It's so weird to see people spend so much of their time and passion on hating something that was never intended for them.

 

You know what the biggest hypocrisy among the PC community is? No one bats an eye, when the same shit happens in non Apple things.

 

I found on Techlinked today that the Steam had downgraded the Steam deck's SSD speed as well, and apparently no one cares about it (couldn't even find thread on first page of Tech news section) as Apple's already more than enough fast baseline M2 MacBook Pro. And not that I'm saying they should care about the steam deck, as steam has assured there wont be any performance penalty (similar to 95% workloads on M2), but its so fascinating to see how Apple just gets people riled up for some reason. Its pathetic tbh.

 

Also as regards to M2 MacBook pro. In a vacuum its a great product. Great display, best battery life in a notebook, extremely capable chip, best in class speakers, build quality, trackpad, speakers, etc. Its a worthwhile buy. 

 

But we as people cant see things in a vacuum. It exists with redesigned M2 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 14", which makes the M2 MacBook Pro a tough pill to swallow. If anything, Apple themselves outcompeted their own product. Not someone else - for you to go and keep calling Apple incompetent.

 

8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD is more than enough for basic users. But then again I would recommend the M2 Air for those basic users. If the M2 Air didn't exist, then it would've definitely been M2 Pro over most other Windows PCs