Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Rene Ritchie.. the voice of reason
- Thread starter iGeneo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
To be clear: benchmarks are not toxic. They're meant to help measure and compare tech from different vendors. The quality of different benchmarks is certainly debatable (and is thoroughly, sometimes toxically, debated on these forums).
The most toxicity is from multiple youtubers posting multiple 4k videos on a subject. They're all video creators, so that means they're pros. They all want clicks, and they'll all sensationalize, even in their tumbnails. They'll even sensationalize the sensationalization of videos... It's their nature.
The most toxicity is from multiple youtubers posting multiple 4k videos on a subject. They're all video creators, so that means they're pros. They all want clicks, and they'll all sensationalize, even in their tumbnails. They'll even sensationalize the sensationalization of videos... It's their nature.
Except when, as proven with the Apple Silicon systems, the benchmarks don’t take full advantage of the hardware leaving to lower results that what you would expect.
It’s Apple’s job to fix the coding of third party apps?
Good example: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...essor-or-nvidia-amd-gpu-respectively.2338453/
Who's fault is it? The youtubers for making the sensationalization videos or the people watching them? What if I like watching them? Is it wrong for me to like that style? Who are you to say what style a YT video should have? Does it harm people? Does it offend anyone? If you don't like them don't watch them. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you are going to like everything everyone says. It means you are happy to tolerate it as long as it doesn't encroach into your rights.
I think you can call the benchmark videos useless, you can call them biased or you can say you are not going to make any more benchmark videos. I don't agree with that view but I don't see anything wrong with it. But going from there to say that benchmark videos or YouTubers making them are toxic is a stretch too far that I have to challenge.
I'm not strawman-ing anything about freedom of speech or the users who watch sensationalized videos. I was, however, being sarcastic. To each their own.
I also think it is demonstrable that social media can act as an echo chamber and that it has harmed people.
I misread your comment - I think your comment falls under the notion of 'the quality of a benchmark being debatable'.
Am I the only one that finds it difficult to sit in front of a screen and watch Rene Ritchie talk about something?
Freedom of speech is also being able to express what you consider being toxic and providing little use value, being more for the spectacles than for the substance of the matters discussed.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
To summarize:
"Benchmarks are bad because they don't paint Apple in a good light".
Exactly right.
The funniest thing about benchmarks is that when they rank Apple #1, they are valid, touted, slung around as gospel.
However, let one show Apple second or lower and they clearly need to adjust their algorithm, benchmarks don't matter, should emphasize [whatever would make Apple win a measure], antiquated/outdated, etc.
We should all step back and think about what a benchmark means. Take Apple out of our thinking and think about benchmark measures in anything else.
For example, think about the good old 40-yard dash. That is a simple measure that can crown someone "fastest" and set a level that represents top performer(s) vs. under-performers. No matter how much bias we might have to "our" runner, there is no debating that benchmark. Someone will be fastest and all others will not. For the purposes of why such a thing matters drives the choice of applying such a benchmark. It is a race that measures human performance. Who can run this race faster than anyone else? To the winner goes the prize(s) that comes with outperformance. We give gold medals and trophies for top performance.
Through our warping lens, we might want to bring other variables into this like how much energy is conserved in running the 40, or how little a person sweats in that sprint, etc. This seems more like "participation" mentalities. "Oh Jimmy, while you were not the fastest, your muscles ran 12% cooler than anyone else so you ran it the best" or "your calorie burn was more efficient than anyone else's so you have the most efficient power-per-cal." Hopefully we read that with a chuckle and maybe an eye roll... because obviously what we are doing there is conceding the core measure of performance while trying to "move the goalposts" so that our Jimmy can win (too... or worse, exclusively).
Benchmarks create an opportunity to OBJECTIVELY gauge one thing against another. The goal of a benchmark is not to first choose who we want to win and then build a "benchmark" to guarantee that. For example, "the gauge for this 40-yard dash race is whichever Jimmy crosses the finish line first is the winner." If there is only one Jimmy in the race, he could lay down and wait for a wind to eventually hit him just right to blow him across the finish line to win that race. That might take days/months/years but he will eventually win that race no matter what.
Reasonable benchmarks allow a fair measure of competition, removing brand biases and all marketing spin... much like blind taste tests or audio listening tests. If a benchmark is a reasonable measure of something like computing performance, we should want our next computer to outperform the existing generation. If it doesn't, we SHOULD be disappointed... not "moving the goalposts" to embrace something else so that our favored computing devices can "win." That's where brand bias shows itself.
Else, by showing broad acceptance that the market wants- that the market will readily buy- cuts in raw performance FOR fewer watts used.. that power-per-watt matters more than power... it is plausible that Apple could opt to further cut performance in creating even lower wattage-using Macs... a new variation of "thinner" over core functional need. Maybe we eventually have M8 Macs that can run on 0.005 watts 🎉 and we can brag to all of our friends on a website like this that we have 30-day battery life. Unfortunately, it takes 40 days on that Mac to render the web page so we can do that bragging but we will definitely have the best power-per-watt computer on the market... so we- and Apple- wins!!!
Last edited:
Don’t speak for everyone. I don’t buy into Apple’s benchmarks either (showing it competes with a 3090? LOL)
I'm not a sociologist; I've not formally studied sociology at all. But, I guess most things are double edged swords.
Unsubstantiated gut feel again...
The kinds of videos being complained about are probably doing more harm than good. Serious videos that educate, carefully lay out the results, and give the viewer the ammunition to understand how the results effect them would be almost entirely good. Videos designed to enrage, taking no responsibility to safeguard the less educated user against misinterpretation, would be mostly bad.
We do love sopping up emotionally charged social media and then spitting it back out at whoever will listen. This is a great evil. The category of video being discuss here is a very, very small player in that evil. And, no single video or video creator fits entirely into that category. Maybe they all provide some value.
You ask whose fault it is. It's the fault of both the producers and the consumers. All participants bear responsibility. If the consumers' habits didn't encourage and finance the producers, then they would not be complicit. But, I'm having a hard time seeing that there's much social harm in people making imperfect computer choices. So, enjoy your videos!
Indeed it is. However it might be little use value to YOU but to me Max Tech videos provide great use value and enjoyment as well. You can't berate someone about their taste. Like dgdosen said above "To each their own". So to me all the people complaining about the toxic benchmarks culture are the ones who are toxic. If I see something I don't like, I move on. I don't start threads or videos accusing them of being toxic. By definition most of the stuff on social media is toxic or can be considered toxic. Even if it was humanly possible to filter to some sort of moderation level who will define that level? We can't have a single level since we wouldn't agree of what the level should be. So unless it's actually causing people harm or it's dangerous or illegal people should just ignore the stuff they don't like.
The problem is that you make this a binary issue (good videos, bad videos) while it is certainly not binary. In fact there an infinite variation of videos between totally good and totally bad, where do you draw the line between the good and bad? You are trying to binary classify this to make it simple and it just doesn't work. You could say Max Tech benchmark videos are "bad" and I will say they are "good" and both of us could be "right". People should stop making statements like "toxic benchmark videos" as if they have the only truth. There is no single truth. It's an opinion. So just state your opinion without making it "us and against them". This is exactly the reason why we are moving to the extremes, both left and right. Everyone is against everyone else. Nobody is willing to compromise on their opinion. It's "toxic benchmark videos" and that's it. It can't be any other way...
A present for all of you:
Obviously according to Rene "the voice of reason" Ritchie, the above video somehow has no value.
Obviously according to Rene "the voice of reason" Ritchie, the above video somehow has no value.
The benchmarks are what they are -- just another data point that you can use to evaluate if a particular machine will fit your workflow. For the people who want an Air and only want to spend $1200 (and don't forget that the M1 Air still exists at a lower price point), the base machine is going to be awesome for them (they are unlikely to be sweating the benchmarks anyway.) It takes a lot to throttle these machines or to really notice the slower storage on the 256GB baseline model during swap. These are incredible machines regardless.
Benchmarks are like farts. They symbolize something that is transient and might be meaningless.
Case in point, I remember an Intel quad core being beaten by a dual core chip from earlier in the year. But quads should be faster, right? It was also more expensive. Ahh, but the benchmarks weren't taking advantage of the 'features' of that chip. It 'looked' slower, and for some software it WAS slower, but the benchmarks showed what they were programmed to show, and as programming evolved it showed its speed. Okay, maybe the fart analogy isn't quite appropriate, but the idea that a benchmark is THE WORD on what a chip, or system does is kind of silly. Benchmarks measure what they measure. They can be flawed, they can be gamed, they can be manipulated. Comcast was caught 'assisting' internet speed tests results years ago.
If you buy just on benchmarks, you aren't buying a car, and even car benchmarks can be gamed...
But finding out that a racer system has one wheel drive on it and can't rip at full speed? Well, that is unfortunate. A benchmark found that design screw up, but benchmarks are only measuring what they are programmed to measure. *shrug* I don't put much faith in them. Far too many variables for them to be 100% accurate.
Case in point, I remember an Intel quad core being beaten by a dual core chip from earlier in the year. But quads should be faster, right? It was also more expensive. Ahh, but the benchmarks weren't taking advantage of the 'features' of that chip. It 'looked' slower, and for some software it WAS slower, but the benchmarks showed what they were programmed to show, and as programming evolved it showed its speed. Okay, maybe the fart analogy isn't quite appropriate, but the idea that a benchmark is THE WORD on what a chip, or system does is kind of silly. Benchmarks measure what they measure. They can be flawed, they can be gamed, they can be manipulated. Comcast was caught 'assisting' internet speed tests results years ago.
If you buy just on benchmarks, you aren't buying a car, and even car benchmarks can be gamed...
But finding out that a racer system has one wheel drive on it and can't rip at full speed? Well, that is unfortunate. A benchmark found that design screw up, but benchmarks are only measuring what they are programmed to measure. *shrug* I don't put much faith in them. Far too many variables for them to be 100% accurate.
Rene be like:
It turns out the situation is even WORSE than we expected in real world use in some scenarios. Yikes. Try to spin that turd.
--
Would LOOOVE to see more tests on M1 Air base vs M2 Air base, even if just raw figures.
But seems like the one shown there M2 is a bit slower doing stuff by an incremental amount, when doing more intense workloads but isolated to just that, with everything else closed.
That would be very relevant for base model customers considering the upgrade.
Also- now wondering if the SSD speed is more to blame for these differences or RAM. Debated this too, at first thinking SSD then RAM, but slower SSD with swap definitely hampers as well, because 8/256 even with swap M1 Air handles tons of tabs like a champ.
Interesting that MaxTech said go with 512gb, and thinking about it that actually makes sense to me too.
8/256 M1 Air vs 8/256 M2 Air, M1 flies and M2 seems to occasionally choke. Has to be more SSD related then. Makes the whole thing that much more sad, that the base M2 Air was pretty close to a perfect offering if not for that.
Last edited:
Are people really defending Apple's decision to use 8GB of ram and a slower SSD in a 2022 $1200 laptop?
This in a heartbeat. The only one who gaslighted more for Apple was Jim Dalrymple (his defense of Apple's iPhone battery case is a particular favorite of mine) and thankfully he's retired although iJustine seems to be picking up his baton rather swiftly...
If you're buying the base model to regularly render 4K video & transfer 120GB files, that is a YOU problem.View attachment 2032194View attachment 2032189View attachment 2032188
Rene be like:
It turns out the situation is even WORSE than we expected in real world use in some scenarios. Yikes. Try to spin that turd.
--
Would LOOOVE to see more tests on M1 Air base vs M2 Air base, even if just raw figures.
But seems like the one shown there M2 is a bit slower doing stuff by an incremental amount, when doing more intense workloads but isolated to just that, with everything else closed.
That would be very relevant for base model customers considering the upgrade.
Also- now wondering if the SSD speed is more to blame for these differences or RAM. Debated this too, at first thinking SSD then RAM, but slower SSD with swap definitely hampers as well, because 8/256 even with swap M1 Air handles tons of tabs like a champ.
Interesting that MaxTech said go with 512gb, and thinking about it that actually makes sense to me too.
8/256 M1 Air vs 8/256 M2 Air, M1 flies and M2 seems to occasionally choke. Has to be more SSD related then. Makes the whole thing that much more sad, that the base M2 Air was pretty close to a perfect offering if not for that.
No one's defending it, just reminding you that you don't have to buy it.
Sure, but it's back to school time and parents should know to NOT buy it.