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Apple Announces New 14-Inch and 16-Inch MacBook Pro Models With M3 Series Chips
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Best Buy has the new Macs available for pre-order and its extended holiday return window is already open. No need to wait for Apple now. 😀
While iPhone 15 Pro is lighter than the 14 Pro (which btw feels like a brick in my pocket), it’s still almost 20g heavier than the Samsung Galaxy S23. So it weighs exactly in the middle between the 14 Pro and the S23.
I don’t think many people will buy the top spec’d MacBook Pro, except maybe a handful of 8K “creators” who must carry their workstations around. For 99% of the mobile users, 14” 32GB/1TB should suffice. A ThinkPad X1 Carbon thus configured is a good several hundred dollars cheaper and a full pound lighter. It’s not as fast, but only marginally so and barely noticeable, except when rendering cat videos, which nobody but the “creators” care about. The Mac’s only real advantage is in battery life.
Ok I get it, I do agree about the menu bar not in the window thing, it’s annoying on a large resolution screen. Ps you can make the dock icons larger.
Yeah it’s not the size of the application icons, it’s the fact that there is only one icon in the dock for any given application. If you have a dozen Word docs open for example, you have to right click on the Word icon, then eyeball where the one you are looking for is, by reading the titles in the pop up menu, then select the one. If several docs have similar titles, good luck! In Windows or Linux, the taskbar takes the full width of the big monitor, and shows the docs as separate icons with titles, so you always know which one is which. At least it’s a one click action to check vs. two clicks involving a pop up menu on the Mac. Further, if you have two monitors, the Windows taskbar can be enhanced to show on both monitors, and each taskbar can be made to show icons for windows you placed on that monitor only. This is infinitely more organized and productive than the archaic macOS where you are constantly cycling through windows to find the one you want. I can’t believe Apple still hasn’t updated their basic window management two decades into the 21st century.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is actually slightly less powerful than the 13" M2 Air, and so should be compared to it. According to this, the ThinkPad is quarter pound lighter. It also has an additional 0.4" diagonal (13.6" for the Air, 14.0" for the X1). and I assume it can support one more external display than the Air. But it has an inferior internal display, much worse battery life, and a slightly larger footprint. It's also noisier than the Air, which is silent, and has less performance (slightly less when plugged in, and much less when on battery):
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 vs Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2, 2022): which is better? | NR
We put the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 to the test against the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2, 2022) to find out which laptop is best for you.
nanoreview.net
In summary, the X1's only advantages over the 13" Air are an extra 0.4" diagonal, a small weight savings, and the additional display support. On all other metrics, it's inferior, in some ways significantly so.
The broader point is the X1 Carbon is a limited-performance thin-and-light, and thus should be compared to devices in the same category, namely the Air.
Yes, you can also get the base M chip in the 14" MBP's workstation-class chassis, but the only reason you're going to do that over the Air is because you need an even higher-quality display than that in the Airs. And if that's what you're looking for, you won't even consider the X1 Carbon in the first place.
You can also compare the 13" Air to the X1 Nano:
This tiny ThinkPad can’t quite keep up with the MacBook Air M2
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 aims directly at the Apple MacBook Air M2 for dominance among 13-inch laptops. But it falls a little short.
www.digitaltrends.com
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In real life, X1 Carbon feels as fast as my 14” MBP, despite what the composite benchmarks suggest. That’s what I was saying: intels are plenty fast if you are not a “creator” doing long video rendering. Air is nice but it doesn’t go above 24GB and has very poor connectivity. Apple had to strip the Air of basic features lest nobody would buy the Pro. They have been good at upselling the Pro, which many people bought just to get the basic features they cut from the Air. The difference in display is largely theoretical too as both look gorgeous in person. The X1 display may not be up to “creator” standards but who cares. One might even prefer the matte screen on the X1. Meanwhile, the difference in battery life is something you can feel. So is the difference in weight. Minor ps: the latest X1 Carbon is gen 11.The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is actually slightly less powerful than the 13" M2 Air, and so should be compared to it. According to this, the ThinkPad is quarter pound lighter. It also has an additional 0.4" diagonal (13.6" for the Air, 14.0" for the X1). and I assume it can support one more external display than the Air. But it has an inferior internal display, much worse battery life, and a slightly larger footprint. It's also noisier than the Air, which is silent, and has less performance (slightly less when plugged in, and much less when on battery):
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 vs Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2, 2022): which is better? | NR
We put the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 to the test against the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2, 2022) to find out which laptop is best for you.
In summary, the X1's only advantages over the 13" Air are an extra 0.4" diagonal, a small weight savings, and the additional display support. On all other metrics, it's inferior, in some ways significantly so.
The broader point is the X1 Carbon is a limited-performance thin-and-light, and thus should be compared to devices in the same category, namely the Air.
Yes, you can also get the base M chip in the 14" MBP's workstation-class chassis, but the only reason you're going to do that over the Air is because you need an even higher-quality display than that in the Airs. And if that's what you're looking for, you won't even consider the X1 Carbon in the first place.
You can also compare the 13" Air to the X1 Nano:
This tiny ThinkPad can’t quite keep up with the MacBook Air M2
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 aims directly at the Apple MacBook Air M2 for dominance among 13-inch laptops. But it falls a little short.
OK, good to know. Plus I rechecked the Lenovo site and found they do offer a higher-resolution screen than the 1080p I saw originally:
But....
You're still not doing a fair and balanced comparison of the X1 Carbon to the Air. Yes, it's more reasonable than what you started with:
But you're still designating everything that the Carbon does better than the Air as important, and dismissing everything the Air does better than the Carbon as trivial. Anyone can play that game to make any device better than any other device.
Here's what, IMO, you should be saying if you want to be reasonable and balanced:
"There are some things at which the Air is better (noise, battery life, performance, trackpad quality, case rigidity, footprint), and some at which the Carbon is better (weight, connectivity, RAM). For me, the latter outweight the former. For others, the assessment may be different."
And here would be my own assessment: "It's a tough choice. If I were getting just a single computer, which I'd use as both a portable and a desktop replacement, neither the Air nor the Carbon would work for me. I need a lot more RAM and connectivity than the Air offers, and I couldn't stomach the Carbon's noise when working at home. But if I had a desktop, and just wanted a separate portable, either the Air or the Lenovo would probably work, unless I needed to work for extended periods in a quiet environment, in which case the Lenovo's noise would be a problem. But I'd probably prefer the Air regardless, since a fraction of a pound is less inconvenient for me than the reduced battery life.
And of course that's just considering the hardware. The Lenovo can't run MacOS, which is a dealbreaker."
So essentially, if you want a noiseless, super-light laptop with lots of RAM and connectivity, you're SOL either way.
BTW, I compared the pricing on the two closest models I could configure (except the Lenovo has 32 GB RAM compared to the Air's 24 GB), and they are nearly the same; Apple educational pricing ($1,839) on left, Lenovo discounted holiday pricing ($1,964) on right:
Here
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Well to be completely fair a good bit of the 99% you speak of do not need a MBP - even the 14" 32GB/1TB would be way more than most people need. The only reasons to splurge on a MBP that non power-users would understand were for additional external monitor support and a little more power. When people take a long hard look at their actual needs a lot of them realize the MacBook Air is a better fit, especially on a budget. Once you start taking pricing into account the X1 Carbon is much more in league with the Air line than the Pro line. Lenovo T-series and P-series are much more in-line with MacBook Pros for comparison-sake.
Obviously any comparisons are moot if you look at OS first - then hardware.
macOS is inferior in many ways to Windows when it comes to serious multitasking. I would tolerate my MBP better if it ran Windows or Linux. Amount of RAM is far more important than CPU when juggling many docs and applications at the same time. Super high resolution displays on tiny laptops are in general overkill and a liability. Color coverage is the last thing the average person is able to discern, among decent laptops anyway. Battery life is real. Weight is real. Noise is real when running CPU bound tasks. Apple has been supremely good at pushing high profit “features” that the user does not know they don’t need, at the expense of others that have a tangible impact on day to day work.
Again, you're presuming to take what is your personal opinion and incorrectly portray it as universal. it's not. I use MacOS, Windows, and Linux, and find MacOS far superior to Windows for managing multiple windows across multiple apps (I haven't tried using Linux that way in many years, so I can't speak to that).
MacOS has had the following capability going back at least 14 years (to Snow Leopard, released in 2009):
Suppose you need to have 10 programs open simultaneously, with 10 windows open in each (100 windows total), and need to be able to quicky go to any window in any program. With MacOS, I bring up the Application Switcher, which displays just my open programs (on my setup, I just press the mouse scroll wheel to do it). Then I click on the app I want and either slide the mouse to the uppper right corner of the screen, or press one of the keys I have programmed on my mouse to do this, and it displays all 10 windows in that app, where each is sufficiently readable for me to identify the one I want. I then click on it and I'm done. The whole thing takes about five seconds. If I need to manage even more windows, I can group the apps into virtual desktops.
I remember asking a Windows expert at the time (2009) if this was possible, and he said no. You also couldn't do it on Linux then. I haven't bothered investigating this today, so let me ask you: Is this doable on Windows, and if so how, and when was this functionality introduced?
Also, if you so strongly prefer Windows to MacOS (which is perfectly fine), what are you doing on a Mac forum? Are you just trolling us?
Nah, you wouldn’t have to do the gymnastics in Windows because all the icons for opened docs are already showing individually on the taskbar, which btw can be multiple rows tall to accommodate a large number of icons for open docs. It’s funny seeing in zoom meetings Mac users fumble through the dock and pop up menus to get to the right doc often on second or third or fourth try while Windows users click instantly to their doc. In any case, there are numerous third party utilities for Windows one could tap to customize the UI and shortcuts to their heart’s content. It’s a losing game on the Mac side to even contest in this area. The closed macOS system has its advantages but also significant downsides. I’m both a Windows and Mac user, for many years. What I’ve observed over the last decade or so was Apple slowing down real innovation and resorting to milking the customer to the maximum to keep their profit margin high. They have become a follower technology wise. But they still always came up with a shiny feature or two each year to boast about to keep the public engaged and fans hooked, while the rest of the world moved past them. If not for the ARM silicons, Apple would have nothing to show for technology wise for the past decade. It’s sad.
Yeah I like to poke holes in the information cocoon around people. I think it’s a good thing to break the echo chamber once in a while.Yes I agree a troll. Brand new member, 11 posts same thread
Nah, for me that solution sucks because I can't tell by glancing at a tiny icon which doc it correponds to--especially if I've got 100 Windows open. I find the Mac's solution far superior because it allows me to explode just the windows for the app I want, blown up to the max size the screen allows, which means I'm selecting from 10 easily identifiable windows instead of 100 tiny icons.
See, this is the difference between us. I'm willing to acknowledge while the Mac is best for me, others might prefer how Windows does things. By contrast, you want to assert Windows is superior, period, and make fun of Mac users. That makes you a fanboi, unlike me.
Actually, I've found that more powerful productivity apps are available on the Mac side than the Windows side For instance, I use CopyLess, which automatically associates shortcuts with the last 10 items I've copied (CMD-OPT-1, CMD-OPT-2...etc.). During Zoom meeting my Windows colleages have asked me how to I do that. Unfortunately, there's not a single app available on the Windows side that does that. I know, because I've checked to try to find something like it for my Windows-using colleagues.
More broadly, there are numerous powerful apps available for the Mac....and the fact that the MacOS is proprietary has not limited developers from creating them. For instance, Windows has nothing equivalent to KeyBoard Maestro for easily stringing together complex sets of keyboard commands to create shortcuts (AutoHotKey is *not* user-friendly).
There's a reason scientists, who want their computers to function as powerful tools, are more likely to choose Macs than the general population. There's also a reason that Google employees have historically strongly favored Macs over Windows. And here's a systematic study from IBM showing the results of a program that allowed employees to use Macs (https://www.jamf.com/resources/pres...roductivity-and-employee-satisfaction-at-ibm/)
Not making fun of Mac users as I am one of them. Self deprecating maybe, out of frustration. Macs are better designed and built than your average consumer PC which are usually crap. Of course people prefer Mac over the average consumer PC. Windows has improved tremendously over the past two decades, often copying macOS features. macOS on the other hand, has not. It’s understandable that the urban myth that Mac’s are easier to use still persists. Like the myth that iPhones are still the leader in smart phone technologies. I for one have been a loyal Apple customer for many many years but have felt more and more in recent years being trapped in the eco system. Apple will still be able to milk a lot of cash for many years, given the stickiness of the eco system, but to me it’s pretty much dead as a tech innovator.
I agree Apple hasn't focused its MacOS improvements on power users (though I think their multi-monitor/extended desktop support has improved significantly; and hardware encryption is a big plus). But I still have to use Windows to access certain systems, and don't find MacOS being easier to be an urban myth—quite the opposite, at least for me.
Indeed, over the years I've found MacOS, plus the aftermarket apps available to run on it (CopyLess for clipboard management, SizeUp for window management, KeyboardMaestro for macros, LaunchBar for app and file launching, Luna for multiple synchronized display illumination control, CarbonCopy cloner for backups, and others), can make using it super-slick—far slicker than anything I've been able to do with Windows. Using a combination of KeyBoard Maestro and those apps, I've set up over 150 shortcuts on my machine. I have those all listed in a single Excel tab, which I can call up with, yes, a shortcut.
As a specific example, you can get great window management with SizeUp + a gaming mouse. SizeUp does window placement via programmable shortcuts. I then programmed the G4 and G5 buttons on my Logitech G502 to execute the left half-screen and right half-screen placements, respectively.
[In case I want to use the keyboard, I remapped the left-screen and right-screen shortcuts to the more convenient CMD-L arrow and CMD-R arrow, respectively; I couldn't use those to start with because the Logitech mouse doesn't recognize the CMD modifier.]
Here's a link to SizeUp if you want to try it:
Irradiated Software - SizeUp - The Missing Window Manager
SizeUp allows you to quick resize and position your windows with shortcuts
www.irradiatedsoftware.com
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You may know, but the extended return policy started today.
Welcome to the club. I bought the iPad after the iPad 2 that they didn’t even give a number and immediately dumped 7 months later, selling its successor for another three years.
Also got the last Intel MacBook Air.
Apple does this sometimes and people will tell you you’re wrong to complain. I don’t think you are. It pissed me off too.
In this case not really that big a deal, both that iPad and MacBook Air (especially the iPad) weren’t a good deal. That iPad was the first “retina” iPad and it just did not have the horsepower. Was junk when it was new.
Similar story with the MacBook Air, and they refreshed that in March then released the M1 in November and they are still selling it to this day. Why did they bother refreshing it? Just to trick people like me?
The M2 Pros are still great. Not a really huge difference to the M3. Except for ray tracing. That might turn out to be a problem if it’s something you care about.
