• 9 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • you’re not addressing my point that the price for the hardware isn’t actually bad,

    I disagree. It is not only that the hardware is cheaper and a lower spec with the exception of the CPU, the design is geared around making upgrades and repairs near impossible or unfeasible. Software has much more support on a Windows OS. Video editing has been bread and butter for many years now, but Windows has caught up due to improvements in hardware and software. In my mind this negates the case for buying a Mac currently, but I can easily see it was a good buy in the past.

    The outlier is Macs are good in battery life. Therefore there is a niche market that is an exceptionally good return on your investment.

    Why not? Half of the software I use is available on both Linux and MacOS, and frankly a substantial amount of what most people do is in browser anyway. If the software runs better on one device over another, that’s a real world difference that can be measured. If you’d prefer to use Passmark or whatever other benchmark you’d like you use, you’ll still see be able to compare specific CPUs.

    Because you cannot use Cinebench unless you are comparing the same system setup. Comparing two OSs is just stupid and cherry picking. Apple has a very trimmed down OS compared to the complexity of Windows. Apple OS dumps the need for legacy code with a closed system designed for specific hardware. Windows still caters for code written for DX CPUs under x86 architecture. This as well as the many other reasons why not. I noticed you ignored my offer of comparing back to back raytracing result, and now fail to even mention it.

    You are obviously enamoured by the Apple model, I am not. There really is nothing that you could say that would convince me otherwise. I will wish you good day, and hope you agree to disagree.


  • Amazon has this one for $1200. I would still pay the extra for the features over an Applemac.

    I can’t help but notice you’ve chosen a laptop with a worse screen (larger panel with lower resolution).

    I would choose a larger screen over that marginal difference in dpi every day of the week. People game on TV screens all the time with lower resolution because it is better.

    The CPU benchmarks on that laptop’s CPU are also slightly behind the 15" Macbook Air, too, even held back by not having fans for managing thermals.

    You cannot compare an app that runs on two different OS. That is just plain silly. Cinebench only tests one feature of a system. That is the CPU to render a graphic. Apple is built around displaying graphics. A PC is a lot more versatile. There is more to a system than one component. Let’s see you run some raytracing benchmarks on that system.

    Well, that’s becoming less common. Lots of motherboards are now relying on soldered RAM

    I wouldn’t buy one. You will always find some idiotic willing victim. In the future though ram is moving to the CPU as a package, but that will be done for speed gains. Until then only a bloody fool would buy into this.

    An apple system has one major benefit over a PC system - battery life. Other than that I would not recommend one, even then I would give stern warnings over repair costs.


  • The typical laptop you buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware.

    FTFY: The typical laptop MOST buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware. Though, I totally agree there are some PC suppliers with shitty practises. Where we disagree is that is if the firmware is fixed by the hardware manufacturer, then you have control over everything on the system. It is only when you have control of the base functionality of the system that you can say you are in charge. This may be too literal for you, but I just see that as a trust level you have in the manufacturer not to abuse that control.

    As for the comparison I disagree.

    This is a £1400 laptop from scan V’s £1500 macbook air currently.

    17 inch screen (2560X1440) over the 15.3 inch (2880X1864)

    16gb memory - 8GB upgrade to 16gb=+£200

    1TB SSD over 256GB (upgrade to 1Tb=+£400)

    8 full core/16t CPU (AMD5900hx) over an 8 core non hyperx cpu, 4 cores are cheaper variants.

    All of the PC components can be upgraded at the cost of the part + labour. Everything on the Apple will cost the same price as a new computer to replace. Mainly because it is all soldered onto the board to make it harder to replace.


  • It’s not virtualization. It’s actually booted and runs on bare metal, same as the way Windows runs on a normal Windows computer: a proprietary closed UEFI firmware handles the boot process but boots an OS from the “hard drive” portion of non-volatile storage (usually an SSD on Windows machines). Whether you run Linux or Windows, that boot process starts the same.

    Except the boot process on a non apple PC is open software. You can create custom a bios revision. The firmware on an apple computer is not open source. AFAIK you cannot create a custom bios on an apple computer.

    Apple’s base configurations are generally cheaper than similarly specced competitors, because their CPU/GPUs are so much cheaper than similar Intel/AMD/Nvidia chips.

    No idea what you mean by this. You cannot buy Apple’s hardware due the restrictions Apple places on any purchases. Any hardware you can buy from Apple has a premium.

    Apple leans heavily on the display being good on an Apple but imo it does not make up for the pricing. There is a good guide on better alternatives here.

    If you’re already going to buy a laptop with a high quality HiDPI display, and are looking for high performance from your CPU/GPU, it takes a decent amount of storage/memory for a Macbook to overtake a similarly specced competitor in price.

    I think you mean that Apple uses its own memory more effectively then a windows PC does. Yes it does, but memory is not that expensive to make. To increase the storage space from 256GB to 512 is £200. I can buy a 2TB drive for that. More importantly, it can be replaced when it wears out. Apple give you a replacement price that means you need a new computer.

    Apple computers are designed to make repairs expensive. They may have pseudo adopted the right to repair, but let us see how that goes before believing the hype.





  • Can you run that outside of a virtual box?

    Will this make Apple Silicon Macs a fully open platform?

    No, Apple still controls the boot process and, for example, the firmware that runs on the Secure Enclave Processor. However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today with completely open software and hardware (as much as some companies want to market themselves as such). What ends up changing is where you draw the line between closed parts and open parts. The line on Apple Silicon Macs is when the alternate kernel image is booted, while SEP firmware remains closed - which is quite similar to the line on standard PCs, where the UEFI firmware boots the OS loader, while the ME/PSP firmware remains closed. In fact, mainstream x86 platforms are arguably more intrusive because the proprietary UEFI firmware is allowed to steal the main CPU from the OS at any time via SMM interrupts, which is not the case on Apple Silicon Macs. This has real performance/stability implications; it’s not just a philosophical issue.

    And wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just build your own PC rather than pay the premium for the apple logo?











  • My point was that it may have been made useless. I seem to remember Louis Rossman complaining about it, but I have no idea over which issue. There is no point in having a right to repair act if it can still be abused in some way shape or form by large manufacturers.

    I think the problem with this one was that manufacturers can hold all the cards on the cost of buying replacement parts. This would open up the issue of people being gouged. I was hoping that someone could give me more accurate information on the issue.