Windows Laptop Makers 'Worried' About New MacBook Air Impacting Sales

[Sheepish-Lord]

Lol, have they still not fixed that? Honestly the Control Panel was easier to use in Windows 98 than it is now.

No and it’s feels weird. One GUI is modern and the other is outdated by today’s standards. Would be great if the modern one had the other settings incorporated but they don’t so you end up using both at some point. Not intuitive at all.

Now add that installing Windows requires you to have internet access just to create basic user account makes zero sense. Sure you can “hack” it but why is this a thing at all?

 

[jz0309]

Huge swathes of high end laptops (>=£1500) are bought by gamers.
It will be a decade or more before Macs are taken seriously as gaming machines, if ever.
The Wintel brigade have no fear IMO.

Same attitude as Nokia…

 

[scottjl]

Huge swathes of high end laptops (>=£1500) are bought by gamers.
It will be a decade or more before Macs are taken seriously as gaming machines, if ever.
The Wintel brigade have no fear IMO.

apple has never seriously catered to the gaming community.. metal is a half-assed attempt to say "we tried" and to leave it at that. the last real apple gaming product was the apple ][, unless you want to count the pippin. 🤪

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

It's amazing that M2 beats the latest Intel chip. And if you do the tests unplugged for the laptops then the M2 leaves them in the dust. Amazing how stagnated Intel did get.

Does the average Windows laptop user even care about any of that? Doubtful. They care about price first and foremost. Their typical workload works fine on a mid range I5 Intel laptop. They need at most 2 hours of battery life before they plug back in.

They are not defined by their laptop choice. It is a tool to them.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

That's far fetched. People get a loaner or buy one to test real workloads then either buy more or return.

Still, you're picking the candidates based on benchmarks.

I've known a good number of people needing high-end machines, but I've never heard of anyone buying each option then returning one. Sure, if you need many, buy a few then buy more based on the results (as I did), especially when you don't know the exact future workloads. But plenty of people just buy a Mac Pro or whatever without getting very scientific about it.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Not to worry, I'm sure the EU will force Apple to make their laptops worse so that PC manufacturers can compete.

This the craziest I have ever read on this site.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

demand for PCs is down as everyone got new PCs during COVID, last year's M1, people were cautious, now, the gates are open for Apple - this has been the writing on the wall for the past year

At my company we have bought lots of M based Mac’s. NONE have equated to “more” Mac’s in use. They have all been to replace Intel Mac’s.

The few that actually know why they are better practically beg for them, then gloat and the rest want new Mac’s. In the end they are no faster because email, web surfing and teams/zoom calls were already fast enough in their Intel Mac’s.

It is almost funny watching them come up why they NEED a new M based Mac.

The amount of money we spend on dongles is simply stupid.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

I have a Windows desktop PC and we use windows laptops at work but am really tempted to buy an Apple Laptop as a main private pc. Are there people here that have a windows gaming pc next to their Apple computers?

I did for a while. It just became a waste of time.

I like to game and added a second 27 inch to my gaming PC. There is really nothing I use that is Mac only. I still have my MacBook but I only use it once and a while and only at remote data centers. I typically RDP into my work desktop and do everything from there.

 

[NT1440]

It's fast enough for a lot of jobs. Beats my 2015 MBP, which was my daily work machine until a few months ago.

That’s exactly what I mean though. Incredible performance that you need to reach into top end Windows laptops…in an Air. That’s a dramatic low end to start with.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

apple has never seriously catered to the gaming community.. metal is a half-assed attempt to say "we tried" and to leave it at that. the last real apple gaming product was the apple ][, unless you want to count the pippin. 🤪

They dominate the overall video game market (in terms of both users and revenue) with the iPhone, but they actively make it suck to play games on a Mac. Probably cause it's not profitable enough for them to care.

 

[kenaustus]

You can probably send out few hundred M2 Airs, part basic and part upgraded and, after a week, each person receiving one is asked how they like them - and did they think they got the fast version. The MBA's /sent to consumers will probably fail in getting the fast versions as both will be considered fast as hell. The tech folks will also probably guess wrong because they should also be impressed. the only area where the tech folks might win is when they are pressing very demanding apps that they are familiar with. But with $200 difference they might have problems. New Macs make new Mac users happy.

I really don't think Apple has a problem here.

 

[xbjllb]

Justin Long for PC? That hussy!

 

[amartinez1660]

I guess it's time for the EU to regulate the market and force Apple to give their processors and license macOS to every other PC brand so that they can keep up. /sarcasm

And a new sort of speeding tickets, but for CPUs… it is my understanding that they love those too, as they put speeding cameras where they can maximize revenue and not where accidents are actually happening.

 

[staypuftforums]

"The report added that 'upgrades to the M2 processor, camera lens, and casing put the slight price increase of the new MacBook Air within an acceptable range for consumers.'"

Did Tim Cook write this article?

 

[Ulfric]

It’s Apple hardware that’s the problem yet it used to work better? That makes no sense.

Blender is just another example of open source crapware. It’s focused on other platforms. It’s great that Apple very recently offered to help, that’s a great sign for better performance in the future.

But again, Apple is focused on creative professionals, and Apple Silicon offers them the best available performance gor their tools.

Rendering is a small subset of their market. I have no doubt they will get much better at it, but I doubt they will be able to match high end thousand dollar+ discrete GPUs in every use case with an integrated GPU.

I got it, Blender is a crapware.

Now show me someone who is working on Houdini, Nuke, Maya, Unreal or Unity , Vray, Arnold etc using Mac. None of these software are opensource crapware & all of them are industry standard.

 

[scottjl]

They dominate the overall video game market (in terms of both users and revenue) with the iPhone, but they actively make it suck to play games on a Mac. Probably cause it's not profitable enough for them to care.

'eh that's mobile games. a class into itself. when you say 'video game' i bet 90% of people think of arcade, console or pc before mobile.

the mac could be profitable to make games for if apple wanted it to.

 

[magbarn]

there is more to this than just Intel. Apple has the advantage of designing CPU/GPU/SOC and software. others dont have that luxury, Intel would need support from Linux, Microsoft. Windows could easily work with Qualcom to design ARM chip for windows and update Windows to work with that SOC.

Not only that, but Intel must've been hiring engineers from the bottom of the class for the last 5 years. TSMC is just kicking their butt. Intel used to be able to get away with bad designs because their lithography was ahead of everyone else.

 

[seek3r]

I have a Windows desktop PC and we use windows laptops at work but am really tempted to buy an Apple Laptop as a main private pc. Are there people here that have a windows gaming pc next to their Apple computers?

I do, it’s seriously due for a replacement since I’ve been waiting out the finally easing drought of graphics cards, debating about whether to spend there or on a new MBA this fall

 

[cycomiko]

I got an M1 last year, great little computer.

The M2 is too expensive. Not helped by the exchange rate, but still not worth the additional cost they threw at it while keeping a year old M1 as the entry.

If I was paying that much, I would have brought a gaming PC. Or built a desktop.

Eh, good on them if they are getting sales.

 

[SlaveToSwift]

I got it, Blender is a crapware.

Now show me someone who is working on Houdini, Nuke, Maya, Unreal or Unity , Vray, Arnold etc using Mac. None of these software are opensource crapware & all of them are industry standard.

Explain why Mac is the fastest growing PC platform of the year, the last 5 years, the last 10 years and the last 20 years? Explain why Mac dominates high end PC sales with an average sales price of nearly 3x Windows PCs?

Apparently none of these apps have a very large audience and apparently Apple has targeted the largest creative professional audiences very well.

 

[SlaveToSwift]

Huge swathes of high end laptops (>=£1500) are bought by gamers.
It will be a decade or more before Macs are taken seriously as gaming machines, if ever.
The Wintel brigade have no fear IMO.

Gamers are virtually the only ones buying high end Windows laptops. MacBook Pro owns this space, its a big reason why the Mac ASP dwarfs Windows PC vendors ASPs.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

No and it’s feels weird. One GUI is modern and the other is outdated by today’s standards. Would be great if the modern one had the other settings incorporated but they don’t so you end up using both at some point. Not intuitive at all.

Now add that installing Windows requires you to have internet access just to create basic user account makes zero sense. Sure you can “hack” it but why is this a thing at all?

Hi and welcome to Windows 12.

Please connect your payment card to your account before proceeding with the operating system upgrade. You will see micro transactions on your account for every Windows 12 feature you install but don’t worry about becoming poorer because when you are dead you won’t need money anyway.

 

[Velli]

What’s different now than the past 10 years that makes them worry more?

You obviously don’t own one of each.

 

[Velli]

I don't know too many people shopping for Windows notebooks at the $1000-1500 pricepoint who are not also gamers, these days. That Windows market has been largely ceded more toward the business world, where corporations have made their platform decisions and are buying Dell Latitudes by the pallet.

And Lenovos, but yes, and this is a HUGE and very profitable segment, that Apple is increasingly killing them in. This is exactly why they are worried.

 

[fbr$]

Jesus that's a terrible laptop screen, only 1920 by 1080? The OLD Macbook Air has a 2560-by-1600 screen.

And the M2 smokes the AMD Ryzen 5800H, 1819/8928 single/multi-core crushes 1330/7050.

No. I have a MBA M1 16GB/512GB and a Dell G15 Ryzen 7 5800H with RTX 3060, and on my Handbrake encodings the Dell is 2x as fast as the MBA M1, always using the same settings (x265, 'slower' preset).