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M2 vs. M3 Buyer's Guide: How Much Better Really Is M3?
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If you truly believe this post is generic click bait, the best way to combat that is to not engage at all. But here you are.
Was this article written by AI? It's just regurgitating facts.
25 BILLION transistors ... in the space of 2 square inches.
Think about that for a moment.
The engineers developing this tech at this minuscule scale are the real movers behind our world.
Think about that for a moment.
The engineers developing this tech at this minuscule scale are the real movers behind our world.
I suspect they will target neural processing ability as a criteria for the cut off in that case. It past of the SoC that has changed significantly between each iteration.
It is indeed amazing… I’m no silicon engineer but also think that all of those transistors need to keep working for the whole thing to keep going. And that processors can run for a decade plus at elevated operational temps is just mind blowing.
I doubt there is much redundancy in these CPU for transistors that fail once passed binning etc
For sure an amazing achievement
It was written by an intelligence of sorts. Real or artificial, humans had a hand in its making
I'm just respectfully asking - wouldn't Apple tampering with the longevity of their products hinder them and thus taint their products name? They charge a high price for their well built products which is (to me) a big reason why half of apple buyers purchase their products. If they cut back on their devices longevity I would think this would just hurt them. Thoughts?
Edit for obligatory car metaphor: that’s like saying “who needs an engine hoist when, if you know what you’re doing, you can just throw a chain around a tree branch and pull”. Like sure, that’ll work, but it sure isnt optimal, and it’s especially not optimal if you need to do it often.
I’m a software engineer, and one who often works in vim to boot when I need to make quick changes or tweak things on something remote, I’m well aware of what can work. But an IDE helps with project organization, easy tracking of git commits, code hooks, formatting and searching, and a lot more. I use tools that make my job easier, no one gets points for making their own job harder for bragging rights.
I also *heavily* use docker, and yes in production. I’m the primary architect of the container components of the enterprise platform I work on for that matter. Docker is great, it has a lot of uses, but it’s not a replacement for traditional VMs, it’s not an end all be all solution (also worth noting docker itself runs in a VM on a mac if you’re running locally, it’s just transparent to the user).
And yes, my truly heavy lifting is done on a mix of cloud and on prem systems with a lot more compute than my MBP could possibly provide, that doesnt negate anything I said in my post. Hell, one project I worked years ago at my previous job was a minimization of the cloud platform to run a stripped down version locally for test purposes as a precursor to full on prem air gapped deployments for 3 letter agency customers (and in this case I dont mean a project running on top of a cloud platform, I mean the actual platform itself). That needed a fair bit of local grunt
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All very interesting. But having just gone from a late 2019 intel chip in a 13 inch MPB to my new 14 inch M3 MacBook Pro - life is sublime.
Certainly it would, and it has been the topic of many discussions here. No company would want to make a device that lasts forever… and Apple are the same. But at some point the new features making use of AI etc might make their older products unsuitable for maintaining the experience.
This cut off of software support happens almost every year already. They cannot support a devices hardware and provide newer and newer software for it, forever. But increasingly I think we will see that Apple silicon will be supported a very long time indeed.
I see and most of this makes sense for sure. I still have my 2012 MBP and about 3 years ago it was dropped for not receiving any more software updates which makes sense as I think the cut off was basically at 8 years. It'll be hitting 12 years this next summer and my main thought was just that they would nerf the computer's (or whatever device's) life expectancy from let's say a 10 year limit to less than that. (Not referring to the software updates obviously)
I’m using an M1 on my 2020 MacBook Air and it’s still amazing, I don’t see the need for an upgrade until a few more years and I assume I represent the vast majority of casual Mac owners who aren’t pushing their hardware to the limit and are still on M1 and content with it. I also have an M1 iPad Air and it’s the same performance wise -- iOS runs fantastic and I expect to keep that device for a few more years also.
I suspect maybe around 2025/2026 I will consider upgrading both to their next models but reality is unless either M1 devices fail or stop working, M1 is a fantastic SOC and don’t see a reason to trade either in towards a newer model.
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I suspect maybe around 2025/2026 I will consider upgrading both to their next models but reality is unless either M1 devices fail or stop working, M1 is a fantastic SOC and don’t see a reason to trade either in towards a newer model.
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I wasn't the person to whom @Fuzzball84 was responding, but I can addresss this:
@Fuzzball84 thinks they've made some clever gotcha for @ghostface147 's post, but they haven't.
Performance and price are only absolute in a very simplistic sense. A more sophisticated analysis shows that you need to consider cost:benefit, and that cost is not absolutely determined by price, but rather by how much that price impacts you.
What is "fine" for someone is that which provides a good cost/benefit ratio. Even for the same set of computing tasks, that cost/benefit ratio is very different for someone with a lot of disposable income (where the personal cost of an extra expenditure is small), vs. for someone with less disposable income (where the personal cost of an extra expenditure is high).
For instance, if I enjoy creating my own movies, and suddenly become very wealthy, it could make perfect sense for me to upgrade from an M2 Pro to an M3 Max so I don't have to wait as long for iMovie exports.
And businesses calculate this quantitatively. If a $5000 computer upgrade enables an employee, that costs you $20/hour, to save 2 hr/week, it's probably not worth it, meaning the existing computer is fine. But if you can save that same amount of time with a $5000 upgrade for an employee that costs you $400/hour, the existing computer is not fine, since the upgrade saves you $800/wk.
[These are coarse-grained calculations done for illustration; actual calculations would need to take into account present vs. future value, taxes, depreciation, and other things I don't understand.]
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I agree that if you have an M1 that you definitely don't need to upgrade for awhile. I still have my 2012 MBP which will be 12 years old this coming summer, and I'm personally waiting for the M4. For yourself, you really shouldn't need to upgrade until the M6 or M7 at the very least. Even then it just depends on how your device is holding up.
I’ve been in the market for a new desktop to replace/supplement my 2029 16” i9 MacBook Pro (which has been my daily driver since I sold my 2019 Mac Pro). I’ve been close to pulling the trigger on an M2 Max Mac Studio, but the M3 Max appears to be considerably better. So, for once, I’m going to hold off until we get an M3 Max Studio, which should hold me for another 4-5 years.
A used M3 Max laptop is going to be a great upgrade option from my M1 Pro in a couple of years!
I'd go for an M3 Max or Ultra in a Mac Mini or Studio if they'd make one. Oh well, til then I'll stick with my Pentium III.
It suits my needs, but I wonder if this upgrade would be noticeable, or if I should get more RAM with it. It's hard to tell bc it's like no one has accurate benchmarks comparing them anywhere.
It suits my needs, but I wonder if this upgrade would be noticeable, or if I should get more RAM with it. It's hard to tell bc it's like no one has accurate benchmarks comparing them anywhere.
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$438….. I would have laughed at them and sold it on eBay for $800.00
True. But integrating everything and using ram swap with the ssd makes me feel like they don’t exactly do it for longevity.
My wife’s M1 MacBook Air was just replaced under apple care because the SSD died. We could get it to boot but the moment you started doing anything intensive it crashed.
Turns out the ram swap with the SSD murdered the computer.
I expect the heavy users on these devices with 8GB will not last very long.
Unless doing HUGE video projects you won't notice any difference in your work process. You spend more time checking your phone or grabbing a couple more potato chips than the work performance will improve. If you're on a M1 or M2 already you might only need one of the newer M3 chips if your doing RAM intensive work like film scores that load lots of sample libraries.
Apple's not going to say it but they are making these faster chips because they will need them for future VR, AR, autonomous vehicles and AI products.
Apple's not going to say it but they are making these faster chips because they will need them for future VR, AR, autonomous vehicles and AI products.
You’re right of course. But many people just don’t have time to sell on eBay - or the patience to deal with the hassle of being a seller there.