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Apple is scamming us?

Astuces iOS

Astuces iOS

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 17, 2023
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When apple compares the M4 mba and the M1 mba… they say the M4 is 2x faster but they are using the M4 with 32GB of ram (which includes 10 cores GPU too) against MacBook Air M1 with 16gb of ram and has a 8 cores GPU. Then they say the M4 is 2x faster…

But what if we compare the M1 with 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU against a M4 MacBook Air with 16gb of ram and 8 cores of GPU… I think it might not be 2x faster…

Ok M1 didn’t includes 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU… but the M1 was sold by apple cheaper than the M4 in some countries… example in Canada it was sold at 1299$ CAD and the M4 is now 1399$ CAD + we could find very good deals for the M1… so for around 999$ I am pretty sure some people might have found the M1 with theses specs (dude it was sold at Walmart for 699$ I think)


So is apple giving us better numbers than in reality? What do you think.
 
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Astuces iOS said:
When apple compares the M4 mba and the M1 mba… they say the M4 is 2x faster but they are using the M4 with 32GB of ram (which includes 10 cores GPU too) against MacBook Air M1 with 16gb of ram and has a 8 cores GPU. Then they say the M4 is 2x faster…

But what if we compare the M1 with 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU against a M4 MacBook Air with 16gb of ram and 8 cores of GPU… I think it might not be 2x faster…

Ok M1 didn’t includes 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU… but the M1 was sold by apple cheaper than the M4 in some countries… example in Canada it was sold at 1299$ CAD and the M4 is now 1399$ CAD + we could find very good deals for the M1… so for around 999$ I am pretty sure some people might have found the M1 with theses specs (dude it was sold at Walmart for 699$ I think)


So is apple giving us better numbers than in reality? What do you think.
Click to expand...
How is this a "scam"????
Don't they say what models they compare? at least according to you they do ...
You could call it "apples to oranges" but certainly not a "scam"
click bait title ...
 
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jz0309 said:
How is this a "scam"????
Don't they say what models they compare? at least according to you they do ...
You could call it "apples to oranges" but certainly not a "scam"
click bait title ...
Click to expand...
I mean they do but if you are on apple newsroom you need to go down of the page and see the little indication to go to the mba website and go again at the down of the page to see the models.

Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, as well as production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD.
 
Astuces iOS said:
I mean they do but if you are on apple newsroom you need to go down of the page and see the little indication to go to the mba website and go again at the down of the page to see the models.

Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, as well as production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD.
Click to expand...
so again - what is the scam here?
 
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Howard2k said:
Seems like they were clear on the testing methodology. What part is a scam?
Click to expand...
So apple is promoting their products to be X time faster than a X product. But tests are only done on full specs devices...

So take an example on the MacBook Air M2... At wwdc22 they said : performances are nearly 40% faster than the M1 but I assume they tested this on full specs mba (since they always do that) and yes it's around 40% faster BUT they are not saying they are using the full specs MBA so people might think it's 40% but we saw that the M2 got a slower SSD + up to 24gb of ram + up to 10 cores gpu...
 
Howard2k said:
Seems like they were clear on the testing methodology. What part is a scam?
Click to expand...
To be fair, there is a question mark at the end. Meaning he’s asking us do we think it’s a scam. Clearly, no it’s not.

One might say it’s misleading but it’s not shocking that a company is going to try to promote their products in the best light possible. It’s up to the consumer to read beyond a two digit number and say oh it’s faster I shall buy it.
 
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Astuces iOS said:
When apple compares the M4 mba and the M1 mba… they say the M4 is 2x faster but they are using the M4 with 32GB of ram (which includes 10 cores GPU too) against MacBook Air M1 with 16gb of ram and has a 8 cores GPU. Then they say the M4 is 2x faster…

But what if we compare the M1 with 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU against a M4 MacBook Air with 16gb of ram and 8 cores of GPU… I think it might not be 2x faster…

Ok M1 didn’t includes 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU… but the M1 was sold by apple cheaper than the M4 in some countries… example in Canada it was sold at 1299$ CAD and the M4 is now 1399$ CAD + we could find very good deals for the M1… so for around 999$ I am pretty sure some people might have found the M1 with theses specs (dude it was sold at Walmart for 699$ I think)


So is apple giving us better numbers than in reality? What do you think.
Click to expand...
If someone is trying to sell you something, why would you think that it’s OK to believe every word they say? Never trust marketing, always try the product for yourself to see if it works for your needs.
 
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Astuces iOS said:
So is apple giving us better numbers than in reality? What do you think.
Click to expand...

No. "better numbers" would say how fast the computer is at doing the normal things we use computers for. So if you are watching a 5-minute cat video on YouTube it would still take 5 minutes on either computer, none is faster than the other. But perhaps you are waiting for a locally-running AI model to classify some images, then the newer computer might be 50% faster.

For most people, you would never notice the difference between am M1 and M2 with the same configuration. Both are nearly overkill.

As an example, I was just now trying to color grade some video footage on My M2-Pro Mac. The bottleneck was "me' not the computer because I would look at the image, make some adjustments then watch the clip and it was not what I wanted, so I re-adjust but I'm still not happy the skin tones so I did something else. And so on. Mostly it is the user's brain that needs to be upgraded. We all could be much faster.

I doubt that most people need a computer that is faster than an M1

That said, I've been a nearly full-time computer user going back to the 1970s. Back then, computers were slower. I'd start a compile job and then get up and go find some coffee or go work on another project. But now it takes just seconds.
 
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Astuces iOS said:
So apple is promoting their products to be X time faster than a X product. But tests are only done on full specs devices...

So take an example on the MacBook Air M2... At wwdc22 they said : performances are nearly 40% faster than the M1 but I assume they tested this on full specs mba (since they always do that) and yes it's around 40% faster BUT they are not saying they are using the full specs MBA so people might think it's 40% but we saw that the M2 got a slower SSD + up to 24gb of ram + up to 10 cores gpu...
Click to expand...


Good news. The new M4 MacBook Air is millions, and actually perhaps even billions, of times more powerful than the Apple I :D Even the maxed out original.
 
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This year's car is faster than last year's car because the engine has a larger displacement that yields more horsepower! It's a scam I tell you!
 
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This is a ridiculous argument anyway, simply based on the fact that that original M1 MacBook Air they were testing was not the default model.
That MacBook Air started at 8 GB of RAM, and completely maxed out at 16.
The new one *starts* at 16, and maxes out at 32.
If it were a truly fair comparison they would compare an M4 with 16 GB of RAM to an M1 with 8 GB of RAM, the old default to the new default.
 
Astuces iOS said:
When apple compares the M4 mba and the M1 mba… they say the M4 is 2x faster but they are using the M4 with 32GB of ram (which includes 10 cores GPU too) against MacBook Air M1 with 16gb of ram and has a 8 cores GPU. Then they say the M4 is 2x faster…

But what if we compare the M1 with 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU against a M4 MacBook Air with 16gb of ram and 8 cores of GPU… I think it might not be 2x faster…

Ok M1 didn’t includes 16gb of ram and 8 cores GPU… but the M1 was sold by apple cheaper than the M4 in some countries… example in Canada it was sold at 1299$ CAD and the M4 is now 1399$ CAD + we could find very good deals for the M1… so for around 999$ I am pretty sure some people might have found the M1 with theses specs (dude it was sold at Walmart for 699$ I think)


So is apple giving us better numbers than in reality? What do you think.
Click to expand...

It’s not “scamming”

It’s marketing
 
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Apple tax
Apple kool-aid
Not done by independent testing lab
Was done using pre-release OS
M1 relied on Rosetta for some tasks
Unified memory actually had trouble servicing GPU and NE along with CPU on jiust 8GB

Yes, it is faulty and bad PR that just makes Apple look weak -- to geeks

I stopped getting upset when they tried tell us that 1,000 = 1024
 
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DankeBrutus said:
Apple is obviously going to provide numbers from testing under their ideal conditions. Every tech company does this.
Imagine if Apple came out and said "hey the M4 is actually not that great, just buy a used M1."
Click to expand...
Apple mostly made performances upgrades with M3 and M4... I think they should focus more on other things... Like screen for example.
 
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Astuces iOS said:
Apple mostly made performances upgrades with M3 and M4... I think they should focus more on other things... Like screen for example.
Click to expand...
According to another thread they already did make improvements to the display in the M4 MBP. We will have to wait for people to get their hands on the M4 MBA to see if some of those improvements also made their way to the Air lineup.

Other than ports I personally think the Air is the best it has ever been. I'm not a fan of the notch but it does move the menu bar up and away from the part of the display used for content, so pros and cons. On a more realistic note if you're expecting Apple to not make year over year performance improvements you actually are asking too much. The executive staff and shareholders over at Apple clearly want MORE yearly. Which is probably one of the reasons why we haven't received a Snow Leopard/Mountain Lion/Yosemite/High Sierra update in a hot minute on the Mac side to squash bugs and improve software performance. There needs to be new features and incremental hardware performance uplifts because those look good on paper.
 
DankeBrutus said:
According to another thread they already did make improvements to the display in the M4 MBP. We will have to wait for people to get their hands on the M4 MBA to see if some of those improvements also made their way to the Air lineup.

Other than ports I personally think the Air is the best it has ever been. I'm not a fan of the notch but it does move the menu bar up and away from the part of the display used for content, so pros and cons. On a more realistic note if you're expecting Apple to not make year over year performance improvements you actually are asking too much. The executive staff and shareholders over at Apple clearly want MORE yearly. Which is probably one of the reasons why we haven't received a Snow Leopard/Mountain Lion/Yosemite/High Sierra update in a hot minute on the Mac side to squash bugs and improve software performance. There needs to be new features and incremental hardware performance uplifts because those look good on paper.
Click to expand...
Yeah MacBook Pro is ok (that's why I bought it) but kinda sad for the MacBook Air and here is why : They have just low down the price from 50$ (CAD) and increased every upgrade for storage or ram from 50$ So if I pick a M4 mba 512gb then it's the same price as the M3 lol

So then if there is no big deal on the price. The MacBook Pro is getting a big lead over the AIR.

Every year MacBook Pro has more features than the MacBook Air has !
 
Astuces iOS said:
Yeah MacBook Pro is ok (that's why I bought it) but kinda sad for the MacBook Air and here is why : They have just low down the price from 50$ (CAD) and increased every upgrade for storage or ram from 50$ So if I pick a M4 mba 512gb then it's the same price as the M3 lol

So then if there is no big deal on the price. The MacBook Pro is getting a big lead over the AIR.

Every year MacBook Pro has more features than the MacBook Air has !
Click to expand...
I honestly have no idea what the complaint is here.

1. Is this the first time you've heard of or seen Apple's pricing ladder?

2. Obviously every year the MacBook Pro has more features. That's why it is the Pro.
 
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