[GeekyBear]

The M1 chips that have been released certainly can't compete on core count against desktop chips with Zen 3 cores, but compared to the laptop versions of Ryzen, the M1 is absolutely not being eaten for breakfast.

>The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

[ohgodplsno]

This article is one of the few anandtech articles which is just straight up wrong and/or incomplete on many points, notably only comparing to (relatively) old desktop chips. A 5900HX (released in January) scores 50% higher on multithreading on cinebench, and equal on single threaded tests like Geekbench. A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you.

So, really, what this is saying is that a brand new, constructor specific 5nm SoC that is tailor made with a CPU/memory quasi-direct link is about equal to a year and a half old 7nm CPU, while being twice as expensive. As much as the Apple fanboys can scream about pOwEr EfFiCciEnCy!1, making up a $1500 difference just in electricity costs is going to be hard. Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.

[handrous]

> Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.

Counterpoint: battery life and, for the first time in my life, being able to treat my laptop as actually portable and not have to carry a power brick and mouse (because other touchpads were so terrible) everywhere is the main thing that sold me on Macs, initially, after ~15 years of my computing life being totally Mac-free.

It sold me fast. Turned me from "pft, Macs, OK, whatever, they're nothing special" to "huh, maybe there's something to this" to "I'm never buying anything but a Mac again until competitors can match [list of features I now wouldn't want to give up]" in like a month.

Sadly, no other vendors seem close to closing that gap. Macs remain a category of their own. Not a great situation.

[nicoburns]

> A 5900HX is available on laptops that start at $2500, unlike the $4000 that a macbook pro would run you.

Confused. The MacBook Pro is also available from $2500.

[simonh]

> Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop

I see you subscribe to the John Hodgman school of laptop design.

https://youtu.be/gHG0cT_ck00

[astrange]

> Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.

It isn't.