You’re making it seem like they’re hiding that information under a footnote. The real text on the page, which is quite visible, is:
> Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel‑based MacBook Air
And right next to it:
> Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)
The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the measurements.
So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me they’re quite clearly saying “if you have an Intel or M1 MacBook Air you have reason to upgrade. Otherwise, don’t”.
"Up to" is still doing a lot of work there. What kinds of workloads are we talking that get the big numbers, and what can we realistically expect on real workloads?
I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3 processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a Photoshop plugin got 100% of the CPU because there was no preemptive multitasking. Windows 9x versions of Photoshop had to share the CPU with whatever else was running.
As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly.
If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.
> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target
Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and battery life are still way more than I need.
I see a lot of people requesting cellular modems in MacBooks, but the integration with iPhone hotspot connectivity is so good that I don’t really see the point of it for most people.
The page up to 2x faster than M1, but it's not worth upgrading from for the average person, your laptop should last longer than 4 years hence why they market to Intel Mac users.
I think that was around the time when macbooks were "fast enough", especially since that was when SSDs became the default. I remember I got my first macbook around 2011/12 and at the time doing your own upgrade of memory and replacing the hard drive with an SSD was a pretty popular DIY upgrade (N=1).
> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly
yeah i just checked mine, it says MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and the cpu is an intel i7. i don't know what to say, it still meets all my requirements, i don't feel any need to upgrade.
> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly.
Yeah, particularly for the Air that makes complete sense, though. Consumer laptops tend to get replaced pretty slowly. I'll be upgrading from a _2016_ MBP (though not to the Air, given the lack of the 120hz screen; going to go for the Pro).
Why would you need onboard mobile? It’s 2 clicks to trigger a mobile hotspot from your iPhone and there are very cheap LTE dongles on eBay. Not sure how much service would cost, most of us have reasonable download caps on our mobile plans. The dongles have better data plans than phones.
1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade!
2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!
3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though).
4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.
"Hey, you noticed things are slow? Well, this thing is a lot faster" is pretty good marketing if it's true, nobody except the very wealthy are dropping thousands of euros/dollars on a new device for 10% performance gains, however if it's twenty-three times the performance of the Mac I currently own? Maybe it's enough to convince me or someone like my Mum to splurge on a new device.
Maybe my current Mac is not "good enough" anymore when 23x is the number on the box if I buy new.
It's fair to compare with devices that you expect actual people to actually upgrade from, there's a lot of Intel macbook airs in the field.
> Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.
It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless. What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.
> It's fair to compare
Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like any of those people this is targeted at would feel a difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.
Depends what you mean by 'faster' ... I wouldn't be surprised if the AGC was more responsive (faster response on the screen to user input) than a modern computer. Early computers were often quite snappy.
Considering that a modern Ryzen is 1375 times faster than a VAXstation 4000/60, and a VAXstation 4000/60 is around 1280 times faster, at least in clock, than an AGC, that would mean the M4 would need to be about 5.6 times faster than that modern Ryzen.
Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.
I've got an M1 Air and there's still no really compelling reason to upgrade. MagSafe and a nicer camera don't really justify it, especially when Continuity Camera is better than on the M1 or M4.
As I said in another comment, probably the benchmark is done just using some hardware instruction that didn't exist on those models and gets compiled to several instructions (possibly by a very very old compiler, while we're at it) vs something handwritten in assembly for the purpose of one specific benchmark.
Does this mean it's 23x faster for normal workloads? Nah.
Apple when they were pumping clang were also claiming that binaries produced with clang were much faster than those made with gcc. This was because they used a 15 years old version of gcc that didn't have any vector instructions (because they didn't exist at the time) and benchmarking using some code that was solely doing vector stuff.
Haha. Well, I guess it kind of makes sense in some way, Apple doesn’t want to say anything negative about any generation of “M” processor, maybe?
Up to 23x faster. Of course, the fastest Intel MacBook Air is pretty old. But 23X is pretty crazy, right? I wonder what they are comparing against. Int-8 matrix multiplications or something else that’s gotten acceleration lately, maybe?
That’s roughly the Air I have still. I hate using it (prior to recently adding the cooler shim mod, it would thermal throttle constantly) but between a Hackintosh and my work Mac I haven’t felt the need to upgrade. I think sometime in this M4/M5 gen is when I’ll pull the trigger and retire the Hackintosh to gaming rig only status.
I don't think it's silly to state. That message is probably for intel macbook air users who may be considering an upgrade.
(Anyway, I just ordered one for my wife, a soon-to-be-ex-intel-mac user. She'll probably be pretty happy about this, especially since she doesn't have an intel air as powerful as that one.)
People don't upgrade every year. I still have an Intel MacBook Pro (2020 I think?) that I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon because it still works great.
And the benchmark is probably jut using one hw instruction that didn't exist on that model and now exists, and is not representative of anything at all.
I love how even fair and justifiable critique of Apple needs to be hedged with the "Apple is great" prefix, such is the terror of the Apple downvote mafia on HN.
/typed from my Macbook Pro M4 — Love Apple — This is great!
The first thing I noticed in all of these announcements is that every main comparison is against M1. Why are they comparing with hardware 2-3 generations ago? I don't care whether my Intel i9 has 50x the performance of a Pentium processor from the 90s, it seems like a disingenuous attempt to make the numbers as high as possible.
latexr|1 year ago
> Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel‑based MacBook Air
And right next to it:
> Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)
The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the measurements.
So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me they’re quite clearly saying “if you have an Intel or M1 MacBook Air you have reason to upgrade. Otherwise, don’t”.
https://i.imgur.com/pEWPXzK.png
bitwize|1 year ago
I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3 processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a Photoshop plugin got 100% of the CPU because there was no preemptive multitasking. Windows 9x versions of Photoshop had to share the CPU with whatever else was running.
kotaKat|1 year ago
If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.
whstl|1 year ago
Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and battery life are still way more than I need.
_mlbt|1 year ago
WonderAlmighty|1 year ago
Cthulhu_|1 year ago
chasd00|1 year ago
yeah i just checked mine, it says MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and the cpu is an intel i7. i don't know what to say, it still meets all my requirements, i don't feel any need to upgrade.
bartvk|1 year ago
rsynnott|1 year ago
Yeah, particularly for the Air that makes complete sense, though. Consumer laptops tend to get replaced pretty slowly. I'll be upgrading from a _2016_ MBP (though not to the Air, given the lack of the 120hz screen; going to go for the Pro).
hwc|1 year ago
But I am glad that they continue to refine the technology.
wil421|1 year ago
hk1337|1 year ago
I don't even want that on my iPad Pro. I would rather tether it with my phone, mobile hotspot, or some other wifi connection.
dijit|1 year ago
1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade!
2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!
3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though).
4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.
"Hey, you noticed things are slow? Well, this thing is a lot faster" is pretty good marketing if it's true, nobody except the very wealthy are dropping thousands of euros/dollars on a new device for 10% performance gains, however if it's twenty-three times the performance of the Mac I currently own? Maybe it's enough to convince me or someone like my Mum to splurge on a new device.
Maybe my current Mac is not "good enough" anymore when 23x is the number on the box if I buy new.
It's fair to compare with devices that you expect actual people to actually upgrade from, there's a lot of Intel macbook airs in the field.
Heck, even some professionals are still on Intel macs: https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/25-of-...
throw0101d|1 year ago
> 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!
> 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.
I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.
pqtyw|1 year ago
It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless. What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.
> It's fair to compare
Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like any of those people this is targeted at would feel a difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.
kimbernator|1 year ago
isoprophlex|1 year ago
HPsquared|1 year ago
https://danluu.com/input-lag/
johnklos|1 year ago
Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.
https://zia.io/notice/ApcPNCgTyrYXpUQU2S
attractivechaos|1 year ago
tr3ntg|1 year ago
crazygringo|1 year ago
I've got an M1 Air and there's still no really compelling reason to upgrade. MagSafe and a nicer camera don't really justify it, especially when Continuity Camera is better than on the M1 or M4.
turtlebits|1 year ago
walthamstow|1 year ago
These days, it's an anti-feature. I have USB-C for everything, why would I give that up?
p_ing|1 year ago
LtWorf|1 year ago
Does this mean it's 23x faster for normal workloads? Nah.
Apple when they were pumping clang were also claiming that binaries produced with clang were much faster than those made with gcc. This was because they used a 15 years old version of gcc that didn't have any vector instructions (because they didn't exist at the time) and benchmarking using some code that was solely doing vector stuff.
In short, they don't lie, but it's a lie :D
bee_rider|1 year ago
Up to 23x faster. Of course, the fastest Intel MacBook Air is pretty old. But 23X is pretty crazy, right? I wonder what they are comparing against. Int-8 matrix multiplications or something else that’s gotten acceleration lately, maybe?
Moto7451|1 year ago
jmull|1 year ago
(Anyway, I just ordered one for my wife, a soon-to-be-ex-intel-mac user. She'll probably be pretty happy about this, especially since she doesn't have an intel air as powerful as that one.)
thiht|1 year ago
LtWorf|1 year ago
totaldude87|1 year ago
zurfer|1 year ago
M3 1.6x faster than M1 (1 year ago).
= M4 1.2x faster than M3.
not bad, but Moore's law is dead for CPUs.
factorialboy|1 year ago
/typed from my Macbook Pro M4 — Love Apple — This is great!
vultour|1 year ago