julienb_sea

4 months agodiscuss

This is a real return to form for Apple. It's fun, pricing feels spot on for this market segment, the continued success of early M1 machines I think proves the spec limitations will not be a real world issue. This is excellent market segmentation on their part and I think many people will love this device.

julienb_sea

4 months agodiscuss

Assuming the Neo is broadly available, which it very likely will be, the price will likely continue to come down. The used market will be strong on Neos. It's never really going to compete for the ultra-budget conscious market but that isn't Apple's playbook. It will compete VERY well for people that want the upmarket appeal of a Mac product which I think has enormous appeal. Probably the main thing this will do for the chromebook and low end windows market is they will go even cheaper to make the price jump for the Mac as noticeable as possible.

julienb_sea

4 months agodiscuss

I'm not sure this really makes sense. The single core performance for the iphone chip is leagues ahead of anything even a couple years old. They can likely increase clock speed of the iphone chip in a larger chassis so the performance isn't exactly 1:1 with the 16 pro, which was hardly a slacker. 8gb on apple silicon goes much further than 8gb would have on an intel chip, due to faster and on chip RAM and much faster storage to enable smoother use of swap.

I'd agree that an m1 chip can probably continue to run modern macOS for a very long time, and they will likely drop support for it much earlier than they would need to.

julienb_sea

4 months agodiscuss

I have an m4 pro MBP, 1tb storage and 24gb RAM. Not seeing any reason to consider an upgrade whatsoever.

julienb_sea

12 months agodiscuss

I pay 20$/mo for chatGPT. I find searching through websites for information feels very outdated. I have some websites I specifically visit (e.g. aggregators like HN, journalism like WSJ), but if I want information I am going to have chatGPT present it to me in a manner tailored to my specific investigation. I do still google things when I want to find a particular thing, such as a product link, but for general information I am going to use an LLM.

julienb_sea

4 years agodiscuss

Consolidation is not inherently anti-consumer. Example: in this context, consolidation could lead to a merger of Blizzard games and subscriptions into Xbox game pass without any price increase. This would be a pretty clear win for consumers.

julienb_sea

4 years agodiscuss

Yes, they could, that is the definition of at-will employment. As long as the termination reason is not illegal there is nothing stopping them. Some employers will escort you out of the building immediately once you let them know you plan to leave, I know multiple examples of this happening at Microsoft at least.

julienb_sea

4 years agodiscuss

"Noon should be at noon" is not coherent in a world where we have standardized time zones across broad geographic areas. I don't think I have to explain why standard time zones are clearly worth the tradeoff around the accuracy of "noon".

You are also only mentioning a subset of research on the subject. Increasing ambient light in the evenings is directly associated with reduction in evening crime.

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/97/5/1093/58281...

That said, there is clearly a lot of scientific evidence that it would be better if people got up earlier and enjoyed the morning light. In practice, that doesn't seem to be what "most people" actually do. The time that most people engage in activities is in the evenings, after work, not in the morning before work. As such, it seems a clear win to give more daylight in the times people are actually enjoying themselves, rather than condemning most of the country to leave work in the pitch dark.

julienb_sea

4 years agodiscuss

Wind/solar generation have fundamental availability constraints that require supplementing with on-demand generation capacity. Nuclear is not exactly an answer for on-demand capacity because it is not possible to rapidly spin up and down, but having additional nuclear availability should allow France to have greater clean, stable energy capacity. It additionally introduces the possibility of broader energy exports to other European nations.

julienb_sea

5 years agodiscuss

> these companies will simply hollow ARM out (slash R&D, cut staff etc) to pump up the target’s value, before flogging it off or breaking it up

This seems dramatically more likely from a generic investment consortium like SoftBank versus an actual chip-focused R&D organization like nvidia. I don't see how this is possibly a counterargument for sale to nvidia.

julienb_sea

6 years agodiscuss

Probably a good mix of both. No need to send out a completely new design along with the new chips, plus the designs are really not that outdated. In any case these are squarely targeted at the "average consumer" market - lower budget, keeps computers for a very long time, places significant value on the higher battery life.

Less reliant on perfect compatibility of enterprise software, which I am sure is something they want a little more time to sort out before committing their higher end lineup.

julienb_sea

6 years agodiscuss

I don't see why they need to rush into the higher end. Let ARM chips prove themselves for consumer scale. Enterprise is going to be weary of the new tech and potential compatibility issues. Proving it in the consumer market makes far more sense, and they really get to flex the benefits in something like a macbook air. Fanless, silent, and huge battery life increases are really tangible upgrades.

A beefy chip in an MBP 16 will be exciting, and I'm sure they are working on that, but it will make far more sense once ARM is established in the "normal" consumer models.

julienb_sea

6 years agodiscuss

I don't see why they would care that they are destroying sales of the intel MBP 13. Let consumers buy what they want - the M1 chip is likely far higher profit margins than the intel variant, and encouraging consumers to the Apple chip model is definitely a profit driver.

Some people especially developers may be skeptical of leaving x86 at this stage. I think the smart ones would just delay a laptop purchase until ARM is proven with docker and other developer workflows.

Another consideration - companies buying Apple machines will likely stay on Intel for a longer time, as supporting both Intel and ARM from an enterprise IT perspective just sounds like a PITA.

julienb_sea

6 years agodiscuss

How is it inconvenient if, as you point out, you already have lightning infrastructure from the last 10 years of ownership? If anything, including usb-C to lightning is better for future proofing as it allows you to connect your phone to a new macbook for instance, which is capability you probably don't already have but may eventually need.

julienb_sea

6 years agodiscuss

To be honest this doesn't seem like that large of an issue. The primary market for this device is people who already own an iphone. They already have lightning charging capabilities in their bedroom, in their car. A new charger is pretty optional for the "main" market.

There is a minority of people, like myself, who are basically entirely on USB-C and can charge my laptop, ipad and android phone all on the same cable. Including lightning to USB-C is... well, honestly, it's not that stupid because most of my charging ecosystem now is USB-C, so this very slightly lessens the blow. Slightly.

Who am I kidding, I really wish it was just USB-C.

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