Worried about the core m?

[dexterbell]

If I wanted to run a Windows ultracompact, the SP3 would be highly attractive. Someone who often sits near me on the train uses an SP3 (and a Windows phone). It's a very slick and capable system. But with 256GB, it's up at the $1300 level, too.

That's true, plus the keyboard is $130 which is overpriced IMO. I'll be interested to see how well the Surface 3 does. Seems like a good deal at $500. Apple should upgrade the Air to a 1080 11 inch display, give it 4GB RAM and a 64GB SSD and price it at $699 or 128 for $799. That could put a big dent in Microsofts surge. Apple needs a true entry level priced MacBook.

 

[jonnyb098]

I agree and I prefer OSX to Windows too but let's be honest, the vast majority of the world uses Windows, it's not even close. Windows is improving and getting lighter while Mac is getting more resource hungry and problematic , it's like they are going in opposite directions from what they once were which I find interesting

That's an interesting point. Apple has been doing great things but lately since this yearly release cycle started for OS X, things have been more rocky. Hence all these public betas they issue. Their engineering teams are stretched very thin with the yearly cycles for both platforms. This year will hopefully hold off on all the new bells and whistles in favor of more stable OS releases.

 

[iRun26.2]

That's an interesting point. Apple has been doing great things but lately since this yearly release cycle started for OS X, things have been more rocky. Hence all these public betas they issue. Their engineering teams are stretched very thin with the yearly cycles for both platforms. This year will hopefully hold off on all the new bells and whistles in favor of more stable OS releases.

That would be nice. I'd like fewer bugs in iOS, that for sure. I use OS X but not yet Yosemite and I have few problems.

 

[cbautis2]

If I wanted to run a Windows ultracompact, the SP3 would be highly attractive. Someone who often sits near me on the train uses an SP3 (and a Windows phone). It's a very slick and capable system. But with 256GB, it's up at the $1300 level, too.

----------



That is correct. The work half of my computing life would be a lot simpler if I had an SP3 and a Windows phone. I have Windows 8.1 on several personal computers at home and it is a fabulous OS, very badly underrated, even on relatively old hardware like my Dell XPS M1330 (T9300/4GB RAM/1TB 7.2k HD). However, as a matter of preference, the personal half of my computing life is Apple (as everyone else is saying, too ), so at least for now I'll be looking at the rMB rather than an SP3.

Big YMMV/IMO, etc.

Windoze is just an atrocious OS period! I always wanted to smash our slow and sh***y PCs at work due to how slow and frequent they crash!

 

[lcseds]

Windoze is just an atrocious OS period! I always wanted to smash our slow and sh***y PCs at work due to how slow and frequent they crash!

Then you're not working with a properly loaded/configured OS. Most enterprise users are on Win7 which is/was very good. Win 10 is shaping up to be a very capable OS. Full steam ahead on Windows development. OS X development is going ahead only when the iOS version is "done". Apple has put iOS first. Fine for many phone/tablet users, but if Apple ever wanted to gain more of a foothold in corporate america, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Apple will live on iOS. Win will live on all the notebooks and desktops.

 

[iRun26.2]

Windoze is just an atrocious OS period! I always wanted to smash our slow and sh***y PCs at work due to how slow and frequent they crash!

I think you are out of touch. While I prefer OS X, Windows 7 works quite well for me.

(It's no longer Vista)

 

[pasadena]

Windoze is just an atrocious OS period! I always wanted to smash our slow and sh***y PCs at work due to how slow and frequent they crash!

That's all the crapware companies install on their PC fleet. My work laptop is amazingly sluggish compared to its specs because of corporate bloatware - worst I've seen-, stupid network configuration and bad LDAP implementation. But that's not because of the OS itself - though Windows does get slower after a while.

 

[gregvet]

It's not about being right or wrong, it's about someone making a compelling point for spending 1299 on 3 year old technology for the sake of having the thinnest notebook. The only argument I've read on here is having a keyboard attached.

I am not aware that USBC was available three years ago?

Same for core m chips?

Certainly don't recall any 1.3 GHz chips boosting to over 2 GHz running at 5 watts three years ago.

Layered batteries? Retina 12" screens?

Your argument stinks. I suspect you mean performance of a three year old CPU, rather than three year old technology. You need to stop focussing everything on one single aspect of the design and see the bigger picture.

 

[newellj]

Windoze is just an atrocious OS period! I always wanted to smash our slow and sh***y PCs at work due to how slow and frequent they crash!

I'm tempted to think that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and take your comments as a reflection on poorly chosen, poorly installed and poorly maintained tech systems that are pervasive in American business. Windows 8.1 is light, fast and stable until someone goes out of their way to foul it up. The same thing is true of OS X, and if you think that it's so much better, head on down the site to the OS X fora and read about all the things people find that go badly wrong on their Macs.

 

[PDFierro]

That is correct. The work half of my computing life would be a lot simpler if I had an SP3 and a Windows phone. I have Windows 8.1 on several personal computers at home and it is a fabulous OS, very badly underrated, even on relatively old hardware like my Dell XPS M1330 (T9300/4GB RAM/1TB 7.2k HD). However, as a matter of preference, the personal half of my computing life is Apple (as everyone else is saying, too ), so at least for now I'll be looking at the rMB rather than an SP3.

Big YMMV/IMO, etc.

I guess I must be one of the few who has to use a Mac for professional and personal usage. I think it's pretty common, though.

 

[jonnyb098]

I am not aware that USBC was available three years ago?

Same for core m chips?

Certainly don't recall any 1.3 GHz chips boo thing aver 2 GHz running at 5 watts three years ago.

Layered batteries? Retina 12" screens?

Your argument stinks. I suspect you mean performance of a three year old CPU, rather than three year old technology. You need to stop focussing everything on one single aspect of the design and see the bigger picture.

Yes, I meant performance of a 3 year old CPU. Which was indeed similar to the state of affairs with the original air. I see the bigger picture in the fact this will be the standard in a couple years. My main point is the price to performance right now is garbage as was the original air in 2008 before it became the hot seller a few years later.

 

[PDFierro]

Yes, I meant performance of a 3 year old CPU. Which was indeed similar to the state of affairs with the original air. I see the bigger picture in the fact this will be the standard in a couple years. My main point is the price to performance right now is garbage as was the original air in 2008 before it became the hot seller a few years later.

Price to performance ratio yes, but the rMB is way more capable and modern than the original Air was.

 

[bjet767]

"it doesn't last very long or else you blow the engine. Same with a computer. "

First the car analogy is something you must have picked up from the movies. In a modern turbo charged car (and race cars) the turbo is an exhaust driven device which increases the air being used by the car's intake. What it literally does is force more air into the intake manifold.

Because a cars turbo charger is exhaust driven it is always on and the amount of boost is controlled by "wastegates." These devices literally open and restrict the amount of pressure boosted into the intake manifold. In cars the boost is recognized by the amount of PSI increase over ambient air pressure. In other vehicles (airplanes) it is given in the the actual air pressure in the intake manifold.

The point I'm making is turbo boost is always working in a car and will only "blow" the engine if the boost exceeds limits or the engine is over revved. Now Nitrous Oxide injection is whole different story.

What about "turbo boost" in a CPU? Whole different story.

A modern CPU is coded (that's instructions) to increase "speed" (which is really frequency) when the CPU is reaching the max. This normally means a CPU which is doing basically nothing runs at the lowest speed (frequency) it is designed for and will only increase its speed as more is demanded of it. Example the 1.1 GHZ will "idle" at 1.1 while the 1.2 GHZ will do the same at a faster rate.

As the speed/frequency increases it uses more electricity (requires a higher voltage) and generates more heat. As the heat increases sensors instruct it to slow it down. In the "fanned" models other chips sense the temp and increase the fan speed to help cool it; quite often before the CPU itself slows down. Therefore a fanned model can run longer at a higher speed/frequency and process the program commands faster for longer periods of time.

So there is NO comparison between a cars "turbo boost" and a CPU's variation in speed/frequency.

Of course in the movies there's a big button which says "Turbo Boost" and it seems to end in a blown engine during a car chase or race scene. In the day there used to be a red "turbo" button on my computer. What did that do? Up the frequency by increasing the voltage of the CPU (within the design limits of the CPU).

----------

What readers forget, or didn't know, about the most recent CPUs over those three years ago is Intel and others have figured out most people don't need speed all the time.

In the past an i7 was advertised and sold based on its optimal speed. These CPU seemed to run "fast" all the time. Then Intel figured it out, we users don't need speed all the time we need efficiency! So all of a sudden processors are advertising lower speeds with their top numbers as "boost." Interestingly the benchmark numbers improved even with these new "lower" speeds. Why? They are more efficient in how they process instructions (which is all a CPU does BTW).

Now the CPUs run at lower speed more often, use less electricity and generate less heat. And it will get better!

 

[cbautis2]

I'm tempted to think that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and take your comments as a reflection on poorly chosen, poorly installed and poorly maintained tech systems that are pervasive in American business. Windows 8.1 is light, fast and stable until someone goes out of their way to foul it up. The same thing is true of OS X, and if you think that it's so much better, head on down the site to the OS X fora and read about all the things people find that go badly wrong on their Macs.

When I was at studying at school, we use Macs on a domain environment with all of the heavy apps included and it has worked flawlessly despite its low specs (Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram, Mountain Lion). At work here, group policies, atrocious preinstalled crap and low specs plus windoze itself is a huge pain in the butt. The point is OS X doesn't slow down or become unstable because of the amount of software apps while Windoze just slows down and very unstable regardless of hardware and even on fresh install!

 

[bjet767]

cbuatis2

The Windows OS by itself is actually a very snappy and fast system. While I have never heard it done I would wager the basic WIN OS is actually faster than OSX.

What I find very burdensome about Windows is all the attackers out there whose evil intentions bog them down. It seems as though every time I boot up my Windows OS there's something on line trying to load itself or steal from my system. I get really tired of having to run anti-viruses (which take CPU and disk time) to stop these evil men and women.

I was sent about three years ago around the country, when my company was introducing some new user processes, to verify the IT guys had properly provided the resources. In one location I found the Windows computers were so slow they were unusable and these were new installations. I wrote them up and found out later some middle manager had decided the users were low on the network protocol. What he had done was limit the network access to such a a low priority the the Windows terminals were useless to the users. I got that fixed.

The point is corporate policies (and evil men) are a part of the "speed" of your experience, not the OS or the machine.

 

[cbautis2]

cbuatis2

The Windows OS by itself is actually a very snappy and fast system. While I have never heard it done I would wager the basic WIN OS is actually faster than OSX.

What I find very burdensome about Windows is all the attackers out there whose evil intentions bog them down. It seems as though every time I boot up my Windows OS there's something on line trying to load itself or steal from my system. I get really tired of having to run anti-viruses (which take CPU and disk time) to stop these evil men and women.

I was sent about three years ago around the country, when my company was introducing some new user processes, to verify the IT guys had properly provided the resources. In one location I found the Windows computers were so slow they were unusable and these were new installations. I wrote them up and found out later some middle manager had decided the users were low on the network protocol. What he had done was limit the network access to such a a low priority the the Windows terminals were useless to the users. I got that fixed.

The point is corporate policies (and evil men) are a part of the "speed" of your experience, not the OS or the machine.

Still, even on a extremely high end spec PC (SLI Titan Z GPUs having lots and lots of PCI E bandwidth, 5960X @ 4.7 GHz, PCI E SSDs, DDR4 RAM and 10 GbE networking) Windoze still slows to a crawl or freezes even when you don't install software and just use Windoze updates.

 

[dexterbell]

Still, even on a extremely high end spec PC (SLI Titan Z GPUs having lots and lots of PCI E bandwidth, 5960X @ 4.7 GHz, PCI E SSDs, DDR4 RAM and 10 GbE networking) Windoze still slows to a crawl or freezes even when you don't install software and just use Windoze updates.

Now you're just trolling. Especially the way you keep calling it Windoze. My roommate has a PC he built for $1100 that absolutely destroys my late 2013 27 inch (3.4Ghz) iMac in every possible way. I paid over $2k for this one. The speed of his computer running Windows absolutely flies compared to mine in doing everything. You have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Queen6]

Windows 8.1 and upcoming Windows 10 are technically extremely solid. Windows 8 fall-down was the UI as in some respects it was ahead of it`s time, and unfathomably broke a lot of people`s and more importantly to Microsoft businesses workflows. W10 looks to address much of this.

I would say that on same hardware W10 is faster than OS X 10.10, unfortunately Apple is treating OS X same as a mobile platform with an overly aggressive update timeline. Apple should focus on OS X stability, function and security, before OS X ends up where Windows was...

Q-6

 

[newellj]

Still, even on a extremely high end spec PC (SLI Titan Z GPUs having lots and lots of PCI E bandwidth, 5960X @ 4.7 GHz, PCI E SSDs, DDR4 RAM and 10 GbE networking) Windoze still slows to a crawl or freezes even when you don't install software and just use Windoze updates.

I'm sorry, that is simply not true. If you have machines that are doing that, someone has severely ****ed up installation or maintenance of the machine. Again, take a dip down to the OS X forums. You will find many Mac users making the same complaints about almost every version of OS X.

 

[gregvet]

Yes, I meant performance of a 3 year old CPU. Which was indeed similar to the state of affairs with the original air. I see the bigger picture in the fact this will be the standard in a couple years. My main point is the price to performance right now is garbage as was the original air in 2008 before it became the hot seller a few years later.

Price to CPU performance, again acting as tho that is the only factor. If this was the case for every buyer then there would be no air, everyone would have The MBP. No one would have the iPad mini, they would all have the iPad air 2.

For lots of people the other factors that are as good or better than the MBP make it worth the same or more.

Lighter weight, battery life, screen size and quality in smallest practical form factor. Storage space/speed of SSD, ram speed and quantity.

Where Apple are concerned a completely new design with new technology, or new ways of implementing previous technology, always comes at a premium. Why is this a surprise to anyone?

 

[cbautis2]

I'm sorry, that is simply not true. If you have machines that are doing that, someone has severely ****ed up installation or maintenance of the machine. Again, take a dip down to the OS X forums. You will find many Mac users making the same complaints about almost every version of OS X.

It's the **** drivers of Windoze and the OS itself. Those who complain with OS X have their hardwares throttled due to dust build up, etc. On windoze, even on a pristine hardware, it slows and crashes due to drivers and crappy software/coding.

 

[Queen6]

It's the **** drivers of Windoze and the OS itself. Those who complain with OS X have their hardwares throttled due to dust build up, etc. On windoze, even on a pristine hardware, it slows and crashes due to drivers and crappy software/coding.

More nonsense, CPU throttling is common on multiple iterations of Mac portables. OS X and Windows both have there positive and negatives, much is down to the users needs and taste in UI....

Q-6

 

[newellj]

More nonsense, CPU throttling is common on multiple iterations of Mac portables. OS X and Windows both have there positive and negatives, much is down to the users needs and taste in UI....

Q-6

Good man, not even worth responding...

 

[Aks...]

So this might be a bit of a stupid question but does anyone know if the CPU power effects extracting of files?

The rMB pretty much fits my needs as all I use my current Late 2008 Macbook for is reddit/youtube/vlc player.

My Macbook now works reasonably fine for the tasks i need it for. All i have done to it is upgrade the ram to 8gb a few years back. My only concern is i download a lot of my TV shows/movies in 1080p or BDRX files and these range from 20-50gb, they are downloaded in 25 or so zip (rar) files individually and then I run unRarX or use jDownloader to extract the archives to give back the full file.

I have found that while this extraction is happening my whole macbook is pretty much unusable. A webpage will not even refresh as nothing responds until the extraction is complete, once completed the macbook works fine again.

I'm wondering if this is due to the CPU, Ram or HDD? As the rMB has SDD while an extraction is going on. im hoping writing files should be a lot quicker so extraction times should be cut down, but its frustrating having your MB unusable for almost 30 mins

Would anyone have an idea if I can still expect these issues with Core M?

 

[matt2053]

So this might be a bit of a stupid question but does anyone know if the CPU power effects extracting of files?

The rMB pretty much fits my needs as all I use my current Late 2008 Macbook for is reddit/youtube/vlc player.

My Macbook now works reasonably fine for the tasks i need it for. All i have done to it is upgrade the ram to 8gb a few years back. My only concern is i download a lot of my TV shows/movies in 1080p or BDRX files and these range from 20-50gb, they are downloaded in 25 or so zip (rar) files individually and then I run unRarX or use jDownloader to extract the archives to give back the full file.

I have found that while this extraction is happening my whole macbook is pretty much unusable. A webpage will not even refresh as nothing responds until the extraction is complete, once completed the macbook works fine again.

I'm wondering if this is due to the CPU, Ram or HDD? As the rMB has SDD while an extraction is going on. im hoping writing files should be a lot quicker so extraction times should be cut down, but its frustrating having your MB unusable for almost 30 mins

Would anyone have an idea if I can still expect these issues with Core M?

Extraction is decompression which is CPU-bound. However the Core M CPU is undoubtedly faster that whatever is in your 2008 MacBook. Won't be nearly as fast as an Air or a Pro though.