Disappointed in Apple Silicon: Apple Marketing vs. Reality / Intel

[exoticSpice]

Safari M2, easy on the smoke..

View attachment 2037835

mmm, this is on M2 as well

 

[booksbooks]

Strange that you're not experiencing the difference. I use a 2020 Intel Air at work and own an M1 Air at home. So I back-to-back them daily and the M1 is on a completely different planet from the Intel Air.

My workflow at my company is entirely web-based and I use Firefox on both machines. The Intel Air gets warm within minutes, and it's a struggle to make it last the full 8-hours.

I haven't done a full day's work on my M1, but I've repeatedly done 2.5-3 hours of the same work on it at home and only lost 10% battery. That's on track for 25-30 hours of constant web use. And no heat whatsoever. AND I have more 3rd-party apps installed.

The Intel Air gets hot and laggy when I play a 1080p YouTube video picture-in-picture while working. Just for hoots I made my M1 play 4K HDR videos while working and I couldn't even tell it was there. Stayed cool n smooth.

For further comparison, my desktop command center is a 2010 Mac Pro with dual 3.4GHz quad-core Xeons and an RX580. I do music production and video editing and have never ever gotten close to the limits of that old machine. It never chokes or lags or anything.

The M1 Air makes that tank of a tower feel slow without the bedroom's-worth of heat.

I can see your experience being much better given what you came from. I came from a close to loaded latest generation 16" Intel MacBook Pro. Top end GPU, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB HD, max core i9.

 

[booksbooks]

well here is a real world review of the 2021 16" and Mr Fisher is no Apple fanboy

He said the battery life was one the biggest impovements over the 2019 16" he had used previously

And as you can see, I could care less about a dude on YouTube. I'm here for myself, because I have terrible battery life in certain conditions.

 

[booksbooks]

But it's not paper stuff and marketing. The M2 Air is more efficient than the M1 Pro in your 14". This is because the 14" has more performance cores and less efficiency cores than M2.

The 14" Pro also has a 120hz display and has to power a brighter screen as well. As for my own use case well my most demanding is Minecraft and code compilation. The 2019 16" screamed its fan at me when playing Minecraft, the 2021 16" was quiet and cool.

Yes I get that. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE M2 AIR HERE. I am dealing with poor performance and poor battery life on M1 MBPs. Read my original post carefully.

 

[clevins]

Thanks for your post OP. I am on border thinking about getting a Mac but not sure what, if anything, will work for what my work load is.

It can be like any other echo chamber on forums. Humans have this weird quality in that they really like to hear what they agree with and really do not like to hear what they disagree with.

While true, part of that is that we see people like OP say they're having a very different experience there are a couple possible reactions:

1) Ok, that sucks. sorry.
2) Your experience is very odd. Maybe something is wrong with your machine or your setup is somehow causing this very out of the norm experience.

The thing is, long experience has taught me that if someone is having issues that almost no one else does, it's them. More sepcifically, it's something about their setup. Last week there was a guy with an M1 Pro, 32g, etc. Poor performance, lots of RAM being sucked up. Well, it was Chrome with dozens of tabs sucking down his RAM. Change to Brave, do a few other things and it's much better. So when OP here is seeing much less performance and battery that others who do similar work, it's probably OP's setup. We still don't know precisely what they're using etc (iMovie but is it Arm? What kind of files/filesize etc? What else is running? and so on).

Now, OP could just want to vent. That's fine but then pretty soon the reaction (mine at least) will be #1 above. I mean, if they want a hand diving into things, cool. But then we need details, Activity Monitor shots and the like. IF they don't want to do that, great but then we're kind of done here.

Yes I get that. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE M2 AIR HERE. I am dealing with poor performance and poor battery life on M1 MBPs. Read my original post carefully.

we have. It's not really very detailed at all and unless you want to provide details so we can dive in and maybe help, what's the point of all this? Without detailed info, no one here can help. If you don't want help... I think you've said what you can say. Why keep at this?

 

[Salty Pirate]

Obvious troll thread.


My M1 16 MBP blows away the intel mbp I had before. Silent operation, long battery, converts video in a fraction of the time of the intel system, how could one not be satisfied?

If anything, Apple undersold it.

 

[Ethosik]

Make sure you don't have any other applications running. I can run Final Cut Pro on battery for longer than you supposedly can with iMovie. And it is a more complex timeline (something not possible on iMovie which is why I moved to Final Cut Pro).

 

[locksmack]

I recently upgraded my 2019 15" MBP with 6-core i7 to a new 16" M1 Pro MBP.

The difference is night and day. I'm yet to notice a single slowdown on my new machine, whereas the old one was a bit of a dog. Some of that will be down to a fresh install of MacOS, but still it's just ridiculously better in every way.

 

[Ethosik]

Well, it was Chrome with dozens of tabs sucking down his RAM

This is it people. The web is such a mess these days yet people treat it as the 1990s where websites are just text on background. I do not have browsers running unless I NEED to for research while working on video. And when I do need it, I just have 1-2 tabs open.

 

[exoticSpice]

Yes I get that. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE M2 AIR HERE. I am dealing with poor performance and poor battery life on M1 MBPs. Read my original post carefully.

Run a game or a hard code complie. See which one drains faster

 

[gradi]

I am lost. Not an owner but looking to possibly buy. But I see so many threads rejecting benchmarks for the newest Macs and then this. Are they relevant or not?

I am a windows user and sometime Linux hobbyist, so often the terms used by Mac aficionados are a bit foreign to me (8, 10 12 core cpu and 8-32 core gpu) I know Intel and Nvidia. It is hard to compare my experience (last time I had a Mac was the Blue iMac all in one? Up until then all I used were Macs (my first was Performa 450) but work made me change to Wintel (proprietary software reasons) so I haven't used a Mac computer in a long time.

There are several different M1 family SoCs (system on a chip) and this will help you make sense of them. I did not make this very useful chart. Underneath is the info for the M2.

M2 8-core (4P/4E) 8-core 16-core 100GB/s 8GB / 16GB / 24GB
M2 8-core (4P/4E) 10-core 16-core 100GB/s 8GB / 16GB / 24GB

* P = performance core
* E = efficiency core

 

[jav6454]

Stop. It is not a troll thread. Anybody can vote and express their opinion here. My experience is what it is as stated.

Your poll's results suggest otherwise.

 

[doboy]

If you don't like it then return or sell it then move onto something YOU'LL be satisfied with.

 

[jav6454]

If you don't like it then return or sell it then move onto something YOU'LL be satisfied with.

People don't see things as simple as that. They try to justify their lack of research by blaming the product rather than themselves.

 

[booksbooks]

While true, part of that is that we see people like OP say they're having a very different experience there are a couple possible reactions:

1) Ok, that sucks. sorry.
2) Your experience is very odd. Maybe something is wrong with your machine or your setup is somehow causing this very out of the norm experience.

The thing is, long experience has taught me that if someone is having issues that almost no one else does, it's them. More sepcifically, it's something about their setup. Last week there was a guy with an M1 Pro, 32g, etc. Poor performance, lots of RAM being sucked up. Well, it was Chrome with dozens of tabs sucking down his RAM. Change to Brave, do a few other things and it's much better. So when OP here is seeing much less performance and battery that others who do similar work, it's probably OP's setup. We still don't know precisely what they're using etc (iMovie but is it Arm? What kind of files/filesize etc? What else is running? and so on).

Now, OP could just want to vent. That's fine but then pretty soon the reaction (mine at least) will be #1 above. I mean, if they want a hand diving into things, cool. But then we need details, Activity Monitor shots and the like. IF they don't want to do that, great but then we're kind of done here.


we have. It's not really very detailed at all and unless you want to provide details so we can dive in and maybe help, what's the point of all this? Without detailed info, no one here can help. If you don't want help... I think you've said what you can say. Why keep at this?

All of this generalized dribble. I have posted the facts, specifically, in this thread. Read it, and in summary:

• Demonstrated that over 20% of my battery dumped in 30 minutes of using iMovie. The latest iMovie with the latest production Mac OS on a 16" MBP M1 Pro with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB HD and 24 core GPU.
• I also mentioned it was 4 k video, 6 min clip.
• I also mentioned I had about 7 other applications open, of which Safari was running with about 15 tabs , maybe 20 max.

Gotta love people like you who keep repeating the same old tired stuff: it's you! No, it's not me. That is an excuse, and a very poor one at that. I've been in leadership in IT for over 12 years, and run software development teams. I'm the wrong person to say that to, because it absolutely is not me, and it's not my setup. And the way you describe other people like Chrome sucking up resources... that isn't the User's fault. And in my case, if iMovie sucks up so much resources, that has nothing to do with me, and no I won't use another program because iMovie is part of my workflow. And in this case, since Apple makes iMovie, then Apple is in the crosshairs, not me.

People want products that work as advertised. My 16" MBP, and to some extent, my 14" MBP, are not living up to that at this time. We can troubleshoot, etc. but the bottom line is, the onus is on Apple and the software developers to get it right, not the User.

 

[booksbooks]

Many of your replies here are disrespectful. I hope your direct reports are treated well.

Unreal for you to say I'm disrespectful. I have been getting flamed being called a troll, etc. And yes I treat my direct reports well. It's a tough business.

 

[Rodan52]

Just to add my 2 cents worth, I upgraded from a 2015 13" MBP 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of 1866MHz LPDDR3 to my current 2021 M1 MBP 14" 10 core 16GB about 8 months ago and as another has mentioned it was like a "breath of fresh air". Monterey on this device is the best performance I've ever had and I only need to boot up my old 2010 13" MacBook (white Unibody) to see the incredible advances in display, battery life, speed etc.
Comparing two top end models, one Intel and the other SoC its not surprising that the performance differences are not so obvious but there's a lot more going on under the hood than just speed and temp.
Yes, my M1 occasionally gets hot running graphically demanding apps but these are apps that would not run at all on my old 2015 MBP.
So yes, I'm a very happy customer.

 

[booksbooks]

Your poll's results suggest otherwise.

Great logic. I post a poll because I want to learn about what people's experience is and because it shows people like Apple Silicon therefore I'm a troll/this is a troll thread. Unreal.

 

[booksbooks]

If you don't like it then return or sell it then move onto something YOU'LL be satisfied with.

Right now I am very satisfied with the MBA M2. I've had it for just a matter of days and it's trending that I will use this the majority of the time. Very happy with it. But that doesn't address my 16" MBP, which I need as part of a specific workflow.

 

[booksbooks]

People don't see things as simple as that. They try to justify their lack of research by blaming the product rather than themselves.

This is hilarious. The bias here is beyond words. So here is your flawed and absurd logic and mindset: because a person posts that they're having performance issues with a product, therefore, BECAUSE IT'S APPLE, THE CUSTOMER THEMSELVES MUST BE TO BLAME!

I'm holding it wrong!

 

[jav6454]

Great logic. I post a poll because I want to learn about what people's experience is and because it shows people like Apple Silicon therefore I'm a troll/this is a troll thread. Unreal.

Like I stated at the beginning of the thread, people have posted several tests (benchmarks, real world usage and other types of testing methods) thrown at the M-series chips. Guess what? They have come on top of all Intel offerings exactly per Apple's marketing.

In other words, Apple Silicon performs as expected and beyond what Intel has been offering for a while. Even the new CPUs just released by Intel are abysmal considering their power draw to performance. Even Intel is feeling the pinch from Apple dropping them.

This information has been known for almost 2 years now, so you coming in here posting a thread like this reeks of trolling on a well established fact.

 

[booksbooks]

Just to add my 2 cents worth, I upgraded from a 2015 13" MBP 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of 1866MHz LPDDR3 to my current 2021 M1 MBP 14" 10 core 16GB about 8 months ago and as another has mentioned it was like a "breath of fresh air". Monterey on this device is the best performance I've ever had and I only need to boot up my old 2010 13" MacBook (white Unibody) to see the incredible advances in display, battery life, speed etc.
Comparing two top end models, one Intel and the other SoC its not surprising that the performance differences are not so obvious but there's a lot more going on under the hood than just speed and temp.
Yes, my M1 occasionally gets hot running graphically demanding apps but these are apps that would not run at all on my old 2015 MBP.
So yes, I'm a very happy customer.

Again, I'm coming from an absolutely stacked latest gen 16" Intel MBP with the best GPU, most CPU cores on an i9, 32 GB RAM... obviously this computer was a beast and in many respects still is. So the difference here for me is going to be much tighter. What I notice that is better is less heat and much less fan noise. But other than that, the issues as I've posted them remain.

 

[booksbooks]

Like I stated at the beginning of the thread, people have posted several tests (benchmarks, real world usage and other types of testing methods) thrown at the M-series chips. Guess what? They have come on top of all Intel offerings exactly per Apple's marketing.

In other words, Apple Silicon performs as expected and beyond what Intel has been offering for a while. Even the new CPUs just released by Intel are abysmal considering their power draw to performance. Even Intel is feeling the pinch from Apple dropping them.

This information has been known for almost 2 years now, so you coming in here posting a thread like this reeks of trolling on a well established fact.

I get what PEOPLE have posted. This isn't about PEOPLE. This is about ME, MYSELF, and I. I have issues.

20% BATTERY DRAIN USING IMOVIE FOR 30 MINUTES. Fact.

So no, Apple Silicon does not perform as advertised. And there are many Reddit threads and posts on the Web with people complaining about the exact same things as I.

 

[jav6454]

I get what PEOPLE have posted. This isn't about PEOPLE. This is about ME, MYSELF, and I. I have issues.

20% BATTERY DRAIN USING IMOVIE FOR 30 MINUTES. Fact.

So no, Apple Silicon does not perform as advertised. And there are many Reddit threads and posts on the Web with people complaining about the exact same things as I.

Then your machine has a hardware issue or a bug in the software. Otherwise, others would have complained on this issue on such a common combination. Have you ever thought of that? Sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones and in your case, it's something going bad with your setup.

Contact Apple and have it fixed.

 

[booksbooks]

Then your machine has a hardware issue or a bug in the software. Otherwise, others would have complained on this issue on such a common combination. Have you ever thought of that? Sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones and in your case, it's something going bad with your setup.

Contact Apple and have it fixed.

Could you imagine an alternative scenario: that the computer simply doesn't perform as advertised/well in certain conditions? I know that may shatter your worship of a for profit corporation.