[JohnBooty]

    I haven't noticed anyone making this argument

Yeah, you haven't read this thread.

Not that you missed anything of value. A previous poster, latchkey, quite literally made that argument:

    "the upgrade/switch from intel to m*, is night and day 
    better ergonomics as a developer. It isn't just some 
    shiny new toy or a waste in cash. For the same reason 
    professional mechanics in F1 don't use shitty tools 
    to work on their cars. Or tour de france racers aren't 
    using 30lbs Huffy bikes"

As to this assertion:

    it really would take an inestimable moron to, say, 
    argue that late Intel-era MacBooks can do the same
    things that M-series MacBooks can. 

In terms of raw performance and power efficiency, obviously the Apple Silicon laptops trounce the Intel-based Mac laptops.

But if you spend some time learning about our industry you'll realize that not all development workflows are identical, and not all have the same bottlenecks, and for many tasks an Intel-powered Mac is not a bottleneck. Surely you can understand that, or aspire to understand that.

I would certainly agree with a more generalized and reality-based version of what you and the other poster seem to be attempting to say: If your current hardware is bottlenecking you in any way, you should most definitely address that if at all possible. A hardware upgrade that unbottlenecks you and improves your developer ergonomics will almost certainly pay for itself in the long run. That is sane and profitable advice and something I've always done.

[georgespencer]

Thanks, I had missed that. It contains the phrase "don't use shitty tools", but I'll leave it to you to decide whether OP honestly recapitulated the same argument in their passing reference. The two seem somewhat different to me.

> As to this laughable claim […]

This is a response to a specific point which rewmie has made several times. They seem to genuinely believe there is literally no difference between M-series and Intel chips:

> There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop. Nothing.

> there is absolutely no concrete reason that justifies replacing a MacBook bought in the past 3 or 4 years with the M3 ones. None at all.

> it boggles the mind how anyone could justify replacing any MacBook pro with a M3 one by claiming "pros don't use shitty tools", as if MacBook Pros packing an Intel core 7/M1/M2 suddenly became shitty laptops just because Apple released a new one

I likely disagree with your position, and believe you have made some bad faith arguments, but you're at least compos mentis.

> But if you spend some time learning about our industry

Whoops.

> you'll realize that not all development workflows are identical, and not all have the same bottlenecks, and for many tasks an Intel-powered Mac is not a bottleneck. Surely you can understand that, or aspire to understand that.

Would you mind restating what you believe my argument to be? Because this reads as a patronising non-sequitur to me, and I'm sure you're not intending for it to land that way.

(If you are pushed for time, I'll do it: nearly everyone spending thousands of dollars to upgrade their computer has what they consider to be a good reason for doing so, whether that reason be boosting their self-esteem by having the latest toy, or a mild performance boost in their day-to-day work. You may not find their interpretation of "a good reason" to be persuasive, but there are likely to be many areas of your personal spending which they would see as imprudent or rooted in tenuous reasons. This thread is full of people incapable of understanding the reasons others have for upgrading and making emphatic sweeping statements. Everyone is different. News at 11.)

[JohnBooty]

Replying to this one since I think we reached max nesting. Regarding as to why somebody might not be in a hurry to upgrade a 2015 Mac to an M2:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m2_8_gpu-vs-...

To put it in fully objective terms, a lot of development tasks (for many people) are still dominated by single-core performance.

The M2 has roughly 2x single-core performance, which is going to be absolutely awesome if you're spending a lot of time waiting for the CPU. But if that's not really a bottleneck, and the things you do are already completing at a speed that doesn't disrupt your flow state or otherwise consume significant amounts of your day.

I'm working (on my 2018 MBP) on some Python software that does science stuff. The single core perf delta between my CPU and the M2 is even smaller for a lot of tasks, more like 50% instead of 100%. And I'm not doing anything that would really benefit from more than 6 cores.

I'm currently planning an upgrade, but it's just not a pressing need as $2K-$3K is a significant investment for me at the moment.

    I can't imagine an F1 mechanic not taking an interest 
    in the latest marginally improved wrench

F1 teams have mandated cost caps. I'm not entirely sure if that includes tooling, but even if not, budgets are not infinite and there is a time cost required to research and acquire new tools. Time and money spend getting wrenches are time and money not spent elsewhere. So I would think there is a constant pressure (like in any business) to identify real bottlenecks, not just spend unlimited amounts of money on increased capabilities that may or may not have any bearing on actual performance. Presumably this is why a developer might choose a regular M2 or M3, but not necessarily the maxxed-out M3 MAX with 192GB of RAM and 8TB SSD for $10,000 or whatever (I know I'm exaggerating). Yes it's more performance, no it won't matter for many workloads.

[georgespencer]

There is no daylight between us on any of these points.

My position is not that there aren't good reasons to have not upgraded from a 2015 Mac, or that I'm having trouble imagining what they are, but rather that it's a reasonable question to ask of someone in this specific forum.

> F1 teams have mandated cost caps…

We're not really arguing the point here. OP was not trying to pass an exam about the specific details of how F1 teams operate.

[robertlagrant]

> OP was not trying to pass an exam about the specific details of how F1 teams operate.

They were extending the analogy to make a counter point. That's a good faith thing to do.

[georgespencer]

Very true and sorry if it seemed that I was criticizing them for doing it.

I believe that OP's intention was to suggest that professionals who work in fields with high demands for performance, like professionals who are passionate about their work, are likely to invest in new and improved ways of accomplishing their work, even if it's only a marginal gain. (e.g. the marginal gain of moving from Spotlight to Raycast was worth it for me).

Discussing cost controls in Formula 1 moves us further away (IMO) from that universal truth they were trying to cast a light on.

[JohnBooty]

     "There is absolutely nothing I can do with my M2 
     laptop that I cannot do well with my cheap old Intel laptop"

Well, I took that one in good faith and interpreted it to mean that the old Intel laptop was perfectly adequate for their personal needs.

The alternative interpretation, that they believed there was no objective difference in capability between Intel and Apple Silicon laptops, was so absurd I couldn't imagine anybody expressing it or believing it. I think I made the correct interpretation but it was definitely an extrapolation on my part and definitely fits the HN guideline of "assume best intentions."

To be clear, the Apple Silicon laptops certainly trounce the Intel MBPs and I think most developers will find them well worth the upgrade for most things -- I just didn't like the assertion that anybody still using an Intel Mac was equivalent to somebody riding the Tour de France in a Huffy.

[georgespencer]

> I took that one in good faith

I tried to, but found it hard given that OP also challenged people to provide "concrete reasons" to upgrade, and said things like "there is absolutely no reason". Everything OP says indicates to me that they actually meant this as evidence for their generalisation.

> The alternative interpretation, that they believed there was no objective difference in capability between Intel and Apple Silicon laptops, was so absurd I couldn't imagine anybody expressing it or believing it.

I agree it's a head scratcher… and yet here it is, before our very eyes, time and time again. I even recapitulated the argument in more reasonable terms ("I think what you meant to say is…"), but they seem resolute in their belief that there are no reasons to upgrade from a "late 2010s" MacBook to a new one.

> I just didn't like the assertion that anybody still using an Intel Mac was equivalent to somebody riding the Tour de France in a Huffy.

Heh, yeah that gave me pause too. I actually think that the example of the F1 mechanic slices the other way entirely: I can't imagine an F1 mechanic not taking an interest in the latest marginally improved wrench, given the narrow margins by which they succeed or fail in competition against other teams, and other mechanics.

You are right that many Intel machines are still highly capable. One could buy an Intel Mac Pro until earlier this year, for example.

But the trigger for Mr/Mrs/Mx "No difference between Intel Macs and the M-series" was another commenter benignly asking someone why they hadn't upgraded ("Any reason for not upgrading?") from a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro.

I said this elsewhere, but it seems like a fair question to ask someone on a computer/programming forum, particularly when the machine in question is close to EOL and has been blown away by a new technology. Don't get me wrong, if this was someone using a 2006 Core Duo in 2012, I'd think it was much of muchness, but the M-series does change things somewhat.