Show me a shipping Qualcomm SoC that’s faster than Apple’s.
Before you bring up Snapdragon X Elite: that isn’t shipping until summer, and there isn’t really any data at this point on whether it’s ahead of M3.
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First Benchmark Results Surface for M3 Chip in New Macs
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Show me a shipping Qualcomm SoC that’s faster than Apple’s.
Before you bring up Snapdragon X Elite: that isn’t shipping until summer, and there isn’t really any data at this point on whether it’s ahead of M3.
In all the years our business has owned iMacs...probably several hundred unit, we have NEVER had to throw out a display. Indeed they have been spectacularly reliable machines all round. We did have a batch of G5's that had the swollen capacitor problem...all rectified by Apple free of charge? 'Processor obsolete'. Well I'm currently typing this on a 2012 iMac...So often we find obsolescence is down to poor management of resources, as computers can be passed from front line duty, to less intensive tasks and last for decades and still useful contributors to productivity, which allows us to buy new stock, albeit we avoided the M2 as we felt the M1 iMac was such a good piece of kit, and it was not financially viable to upgrade so quickly for so little gain. We will though be buying 24 m3 iMac, and likely M3 based studios and minis, when available.
Businesses like mine buy equipment to serve a given purpose, and then if something comes along that gives us a productivity boost that is economically viable we buy, but seldom are the replaced units consigned to scrap or traded in, as we find we can get better productivity using them elsewhere, and that's when buying AIO works so well, no cables everywhere and potential lawsuits for some idiot tripping over a cable or pulling one out by mistake, so the last thing on earth we would want is an AIO that you upgrade by removing the guts and replacing it.
It's a bit like a vehicle, if you do get units showing their age, no longer productive, then its likely technology has moved apace both in terms of guts and screen.
Would be good, however to have user upgradeable memory, but when its SOC you know that the unified memory is what you buy and is not upgradeable after purchase? we still have Macs that are 15 years old doing viable work, and at the other end we have the more powerful units.
Too much is about ego and having the latest toy, rather than working out the financials properly, and enjoying the productivity and profit increases based on decent financial projection.
Even have Lisa's, but they are more display, but all still work.
I hope you are correct. I just ordered a 16/1TB Yellow iMac M3 to replace my perfectly usable 2019 i9 Intel iMac. I wrestled with the separates versus AIO as a purely hobbyist guy and the AIO is just a better deal. Probably my last computer unless something unheard of comes along.
What makes you say that ? Comparing both, it seems that the M2 Ultra is from 9 to 16% slower than the 7995X, at least if you refer to Geekbench 6. The M3 Ultra will obviously beat that.
Sources from Geekbench
- M2 Ultra : https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=✓&q=M2+Ultra (scores between 21,000 and 22,000)
- Threadripper 7995WX : https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=✓&q=7995WX (seems to score scores between 24,000 and 25,000)
It's not dodging.
That 30 minute video was one long marketing gimmick.
You have a silent assumption: that Apple wants M2 users to upgrade.
But Apple market brains know where to find buyers of their machines. When Apple is currently offering M2 products and buyers of M2 products may have done so in less than the past 12 months, the marketing people know those people are unlikely to upgrade (Youtube "content creators" aside.)
Apple want to sell computers.
And if at least half of current Mac users are still on Intel, as is claimed, then that is the most likely market in which one can find new buyers of M3 devices.
Hence that was the focus of the 30 minute commercial.
So the new M3 Macs are 23,000% faster than my 1993 iMac 6100 running at 66 Mhz. I just might consider upgrade. Does Apple offer a trade-in policy?
Amen.
I'm looking for a computer that will last me 15 years. Current iMac has done that. I don't know if the M3 iMac will last that long though as I'm still wondering if that soldered in NAND chip can last that long.
After reading up on the topic, I have to start with the mea culpa about calling the M2 ultra badly engineered because only beats the m2 max by 40% while it's two maxes glued together. It turns out the geekbench multi- core test scales really bad after 8 cores/threads. That Threadripper has 96/192, several ballparks over the M2. In other benchmarks it scores 3-4 times higher than the m2 ultra.
But it also means that comparisons with even 13th and 14th gen i7s and i9s must be taken with a grain of salt.
To be fair, Apple has nearly always tried to make their computers appealing aesthetically, and to create an aura of desirability and exclusivity around them. This is part of the brand, and one of the reasons why people will pay for them. The same applies to many consumer items.
As for maximising profits…this is the purpose of a capitalist venture. Apple sets prices to what the target market will bear, to increase its profits. It’s a business, not a charity or not-for-profit organisation.
Can you buy a more performant machine for less money? Sure you can, but you have to realize that this is not important for a lot of people. People want something that looks and feels good, fits their “lifestyle” (portable, small, fashionable), durable, reliable, and fast enough for the computing tasks they need.
Unless you are a hobbyist, few users want to mess around with the internals of their machines - not even IT professionals like myself. I used to do it for fun, but my most important requirements for a computer are reliability, stability, and minimum time spent in maintaining it - all things that can have an impact on performing my actual work.
Heh
yeahhhh... I get "pointless" a lot. Can't be showing off, though; it's just the daily grind for me. Ain't even possible for me to show off in these forums. Showing off would be having an M3 Max in hand to compare to an M2 Max. Man, I still use a 15" Intel MBP with a sketchy butterfly keyboard and 64% of its battery life.
That's good news for me. I do a lot of high performance stuff like compiling code and rendering video
Re @tYNS ’s post, some people are so concerned about the “pro” status of their own machines and the perceived misrepresentation of Apple’s interpretation of this word, that they feel obliged to preach this ”revelation” to the whole world…ad nauseam
They fail to realize that most people simply don’t care, and value a nice looking, small and reliable computer that is easy to use more than the performance benefits of a larger system that might require self-assembly and configuration.
They will sit in their (parents’) dank basement room with their super self-built nitrogen-cooled gaming rig stuffed with GPUs and mutter about “Apple sheep”, and wonder why the hipster with the MacBook in the coffee shop can talk to the pretty girls so easily…don’t they know he has an inferior machine!!!???
Two options:
1) wait for YouTube reviews that are close to your own use case, and hope that they test the specific machines you are considering
2) Buy multiple machines yourself, test them and return the ones that that don meet your requirements or greatly exceed them. You need to have the finances to do this of course!
I think you misunderstood... I think Apple are getting too expensive. The tipping point is when the pride seems unreadable and unjust.
I'm talking of course about highest M3 Max scores...🤭
Initially I was surprised they didn't release the Mac Studio inline with the M3 upgrade. But I thought maybe thats another press event later down the road. But with the news of the Ray tracing, I wondering if they are getting all the kinks out of the ray tracing engine before shoving it into a gaming ready Mac Studio-esque computer.
