Apple Silicon differentiates Apple from the competition.
It could be a bad thing - like all those proprietary connectors and dongles - but Apple Silicon is very well perceived.
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.
Windows Laptop Makers 'Worried' About New MacBook Air Impacting Sales
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It could be a bad thing - like all those proprietary connectors and dongles - but Apple Silicon is very well perceived.
Those two sentences seem contradictory. For people who are very price conscious, they will still perceive a Mac as too expensive.
One has to kind of know that part of what you're paying more for is the operating system and whole unique package.
Most people will just buy the cheapest computer on the shelf, and wind up with a Chromebook or Windows S Mode and not even understand what it is.
I don't think it reads like that at all, but that could be because I've been expecting this to happen. I did have a few immediate reactions though:
1) I hate stories like this, because they're often missing key details, sources, context, etc. I wish there were more specific data available as to what they're so "scared" of and what exact factors trigger it.
2) If the story is true, and I believe it probably is, I can't think of better empirical evidence that Apple Silicon is officially a disruption to the PC industry. This is mind blowing in itself, because the Mac has already done that once or twice before in its lifetime.
3) The MacBook Air is, and always has been, a very successful product. The new model is going to print money for Apple, and is going to encourage even more switchers. Even people who need Windows--as long as their software will run on SoCs in emulation, they're covered too in a lot of use cases. I personally do not need a new MacBook Air, but I'm actually thinking of driving out to the Apple Store just to look at and hold one in my hands. I really want to interact with that new design in person.
4) The time to be scared of this is not July 2022. I refuse to believe any 3rd party PC maker in business today JUST NOW started quivering in their boots. The time to panic about this was when the rumblings started that Apple was making their own Mac silicon. The second time to panic was when they soft launched it for upcoming Macs. The third time to panic was when they retrofitted M1 to the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini and shipped them to customers.
My point: the worries are justified, but anyone caught flatfooted right now has been asleep at the wheel. I already feel like Apple is never bringing their business back to Intel for any reason. Now it's going to start trickling down to Windows hardware sales. macOS may never be the dominant platform, but it will continue leeching customers from the Dells, HPs, and Lenovos of the world.
The OS was the best a few years ago, but it lost a lot of feathers through time.
It does not really have that "special feeling" anymore, Windows copied a lot of features (like Mission Control), and it's now filled with bugs unfortunately, especially Cloud-related where Microsoft excels. The hardware team did a great job so far, but the software team is really lagging behind.
I can’t explain why Intel has had problems updating their x86 GPU’s but they obviously have. I’ve quit looking but has Intel gotten sub 10 nm chipsets yet? But price is usually THE deciding factor with any item. Most home users (not home businesses) will initially trade performance for a cheaper price. Sometimes a lot of performance for not that great of a price decrease.
My mom is 84. A few years back my brothers bought her a pc laptop so she could stay in touch with family and stuff. After a few months she never used it. Hated it. Windows kept updating. Took forever to get to load. Trackpad was horrible. Different program had different interfaces.
so I bought her an iPad. Loaded it with the important apps. Deleted everything else. Hid All the apps that I couldn’t delete. Set it up for her. Personalized it. Signed into everything. Made sure all password were there. And she loves it. She can just pic it up and press and icon and she taking to peole. Watching shows on Netflix etc. best investment I made for my mom.
- Faster = Yes! And less bloated.
- Longer battery = True for equivalent tasks, but some Wintel laptops have really fantastic battery life too.
- Comparable in price = Not really, you can get a good performance Windows laptop for the price of a mid-range MacBook Air.
- Cheaper = Absolutely not.
You don’t get that Apple has its own silicon design? Have you been asleep?
An issue with the “nanometer war” is that not all companies refer to the same thing, some measure/report the node size, others the gate length. Apple keeps taunting about the nano-size of their transistors but in reality Intel has achieved even more transistor density than Apple in many products where they claimed to be smaller.
For example the photo below. What TSMC calls 7nm is essentially the same process Intel calls 14nm+++.
Attachments
Not at all. The quote is referring to devices in that $1000-1500 price range, which the MBA falls under. If the prospective customer is looking to spend that much, the MBA would be stiff competition.
Want to compare them on battery power?M2 is slower than an i7. What are you talking about?
Apple says new M2 chip won't beat Intel's finest
Apple's new M2 is a worthy sequel to the M1 but doesn't flat out beat Intel's best CPUs in performance.www.pcworld.com
Trust me, they don't. While some wish they would, doing so would be the end of Apple.
Contrary to popular belief, the goal is not to listen to the masses (for those who somehow haven't noticed, the masses a complete and utter mess). That's the Android and Windows strategy. And their offerings completely reflect the mess that is the masses. No, the actual goal is laser focus - something of which Apple has proven insanely capable. Thankfully.
The same could be said about M1 and M2. While Apple claims the latter is up to 20% faster (which has been confirmed independently but tech enthusiasts) it does so at the expense of more power and less battery life.
I don’t know if I would say most people but obviously a lot of them do. First spec most people look at is the price, and there has to be an extremely good reason to not buy a cheaper computer if the price is low.
Show me a windows laptop that beats M2 and is in the same price range! Recent benchmarks shows that high end windows laptops are about 50% of the M2 when unplugged, and about 80 - 90% when plugged in, but then just the power supply is half the weight of the mac.
I know about the software problem, but they have Rosetta that can ran software compiled for x86, but I think you mean software that has never been ported to the mac and needs to be run under Windows in Bootcamp, then of-course you need a Windows machine.
Microsoft excels at cloud related tasks? No way! I had to ditch all cloud services from my Windows laptop because it was killing it, just changing a file name or saving a new file would make the CPU go to near 100% usage and fire the fans to maximum.
It happened with OneDrive mostly, but also with Box. No desktop OS is really good at cloud management so far, I believe iOS and Android do a smoother job at it, my iPad works better with cloud apps than my laptops do.
This is pure nonsense. This is digitimes, after all, and they’re in the business of selling stories… unfortunately the news business is dead.
I have friends in the industry and everyone is worried about the economy, not Apple’s new M2 Air. If they had anything to worry about from Apple, it was when Apple launched the M1 Macs. M2? With all the issues we’re seeing? Not so much.
Selective memory. Before Apple Silicon, Apple was always a couple generations behind Windows hardware in in terms of including standard ports and features that existed in Windows hardware.
You know people need to make up their minds. These things are either slow and run like Celerons under load or a threat to every other laptop in the industry. They can’t be both.
I'm no fanboy of any sort but I gotta give credit where it's due, I've always used Windows and I don't mind it as an OS but since what suits my needs is a high-end ultrabook I got Apple silicon without second thoughts. Certain things in macOS drive me crazy but so do certain things in Windows. Working in IT for quite a few years I've never come across more people asking me "I've been thinking to get a macBook, what do you think?"
I'm trying to understand how this regulation, this new law is going to work. They are essentially telling a company to spend time, resources, research, and development on building things so that competitors can gain an upper hand, while simultaneously completely dismantling one of the primary reasons that consumers select the platform. It's not rational to say "don't use side loading if you don't want to" because once the door is busted open, once consumers are coerced, there is no going back, and our devices will be essentially the same virus malware spyware ridden platform as PCs.
But let's not even argue about that for the moment. Instead, can someone clarify whether or not this new law will force ALL platform developers to create ways for all competitors to install anything they want? Meaning, can we all now circumvent Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox to install any apps we want? What about our cars and other devices, do those manufacturers also have to open up their platforms and provide necessary APIs for us to side-load apps and services onto them? Or has the EU merely written an "Apple-only" law?
It'll be interesting to see how companies like Amazon, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and every other platform developer responds to having to develop ways to allow other companies to side-load. Maybe it'll be good for the industry. For example, a whole new genre of anti-virus/malware softwares will be needed to protect Nintendo and Playstation devices.