Is there even a better ARM SoC? All I know of is the Snapdragon X Elites, which are either on par or slightly below the M4. And you can only get them in a laptop form factor at this point, cuz they cancelled the mini-PC dev kit.
Back in 2009-2010 I bought an entry level 13" MacBook Pro because it was fairly competitively priced compared to other options with similar specs, but the MBP had by far the better battery life, display quality, touchpad, and probably keyboard. It was easily worth the upcharge for those factors, so no real Apple Tax.
Honestly, now that they put in a reasonable amount of RAM, with a processor that strong and some external storage, 600USD isn’t that terrible of a price.
I’d need to see what comparable x86 processors and graphics are to the M4, but yeah, this seems like it could be one of the first Macs in a while to be really competitive on price. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Fifteen years ago, a couple years after Macintosh went to Intel, I bought a Mac Pro. I had a hard time comparing prices at first, but once I finally realized I needed to be looking at workstations instead of desktops the Mac Pro actually came out to be about $300 less than identically spec’d workstations from Dell and HP. That was about the price of a full retail license on Windows Vista Ultimate (or later Windows 7 Ultimate). With Boot Camp and feeling like I could find Windows on sale for less it actually seemed to make the most sense with the added benefit of access to both Windows and OS X. It was frankly the best Windows machine I’ve ever used. No bloat, and all the drivers worked.
The X1 Carbon isn’t much cheaper than a Macbook Air and ditto for Dell XPS vs Macbook Pro. The Macs have better build quality usually, but the PCs would get better specs. RAM, at least.
The Galaxy S series stars in the same range as iPhones do, though you get a better screen. But in the Ultra and Pro Max versions the screens trade blows and the iPhone is apparently cheaper.
When I was last comparing laptops a few years back I was seriously leaning towards the Framework AMD. It was clearly a tradeoff between Apple’s displays, trackpad, lid hinges, CPU/GPU benchmarks, and battery life, versus much more built in memory and storage, a tall display form factor, and better Linux support. Price was kinda a wash, as I was just comparing what I could get for $1500 at the time. I ended up with an Apple again, in the end. I’m keeping an eye on progress with the Asahi project, though, and might switch OSes soon.
I’m exactly the same, if I was getting a new laptop I’d be completely torn between Framework and Apple, the polar opposites. Part of me wants freedom, upgradability, repairability… And part of me wants a super high quality aluminum body, a trackpad so good you don’t even need a mouse, and whatever magic they do to make their screens look so good even if some PCs have higher resolutions nowadays.
I think the issue is - I would buy something positioned as a very long-living and good machine for that price.
Like Sun workstations were. The design and experience of everything.
The issue with Apple is that these things look expensive, temporary and inconvenient (that feeling of concept nice to look at … for a day or so). And what’s worse, they are.
I hope Larry Ellison gets geriatric demented sooner, maybe then he’ll try to resurrect Sun as a separate entity. Just joking, even to Larry Ellison I only wish good health.
That doesn’t seem very good for the price.
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$600 gets you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can get better hardware for less.
Is there even a better ARM SoC? All I know of is the Snapdragon X Elites, which are either on par or slightly below the M4. And you can only get them in a laptop form factor at this point, cuz they cancelled the mini-PC dev kit.
M4 reportedly outperforms Intel’s Core i9-14900KS by 16%. That CPU alone is over $600.
When… have their products ever been competitive on price? Not even shitting on them, but there’s always been an Apple tax.
Back in 2009-2010 I bought an entry level 13" MacBook Pro because it was fairly competitively priced compared to other options with similar specs, but the MBP had by far the better battery life, display quality, touchpad, and probably keyboard. It was easily worth the upcharge for those factors, so no real Apple Tax.
Honestly, now that they put in a reasonable amount of RAM, with a processor that strong and some external storage, 600USD isn’t that terrible of a price.
I’d need to see what comparable x86 processors and graphics are to the M4, but yeah, this seems like it could be one of the first Macs in a while to be really competitive on price. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Fifteen years ago, a couple years after Macintosh went to Intel, I bought a Mac Pro. I had a hard time comparing prices at first, but once I finally realized I needed to be looking at workstations instead of desktops the Mac Pro actually came out to be about $300 less than identically spec’d workstations from Dell and HP. That was about the price of a full retail license on Windows Vista Ultimate (or later Windows 7 Ultimate). With Boot Camp and feeling like I could find Windows on sale for less it actually seemed to make the most sense with the added benefit of access to both Windows and OS X. It was frankly the best Windows machine I’ve ever used. No bloat, and all the drivers worked.
They’ve often been on par with competitors tbh.
The X1 Carbon isn’t much cheaper than a Macbook Air and ditto for Dell XPS vs Macbook Pro. The Macs have better build quality usually, but the PCs would get better specs. RAM, at least.
The Galaxy S series stars in the same range as iPhones do, though you get a better screen. But in the Ultra and Pro Max versions the screens trade blows and the iPhone is apparently cheaper.
When I was last comparing laptops a few years back I was seriously leaning towards the Framework AMD. It was clearly a tradeoff between Apple’s displays, trackpad, lid hinges, CPU/GPU benchmarks, and battery life, versus much more built in memory and storage, a tall display form factor, and better Linux support. Price was kinda a wash, as I was just comparing what I could get for $1500 at the time. I ended up with an Apple again, in the end. I’m keeping an eye on progress with the Asahi project, though, and might switch OSes soon.
I’m exactly the same, if I was getting a new laptop I’d be completely torn between Framework and Apple, the polar opposites. Part of me wants freedom, upgradability, repairability… And part of me wants a super high quality aluminum body, a trackpad so good you don’t even need a mouse, and whatever magic they do to make their screens look so good even if some PCs have higher resolutions nowadays.
I think the issue is - I would buy something positioned as a very long-living and good machine for that price.
Like Sun workstations were. The design and experience of everything.
The issue with Apple is that these things look expensive, temporary and inconvenient (that feeling of concept nice to look at … for a day or so). And what’s worse, they are.
I hope Larry Ellison gets geriatric demented sooner, maybe then he’ll try to resurrect Sun as a separate entity. Just joking, even to Larry Ellison I only wish good health.
I wish him bad health:
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/09/16/oracle_ai_mass_surveillance_cloud/
Oh. F*ck Larry.