- cross-posted to:
- gadgets@hardware.watch
- cross-posted to:
- gadgets@hardware.watch
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Currently waiting for my order. Any Pro or Mac chip is a total overkill for my use, but i still wanted a Pro machine. Awesome to hear that the M3 Pro 16 inch is that efficient. Should still be overkill for my use in even five years time.
More efficiency, more performance. When you are already the best, you don’t need a significant jump in performance. Battery efficiency though? The battery life on these Mac’s is already outstanding, but I will always want more. The dream is a battery that never runs out 😁
The dream is a battery that never runs out 😁
in my home, we do not violate the Laws of Physics.
in my home, we do not violate the Laws of Physics.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Well, then I’m going to build my own home, with cocaine and perpetual motion machines.
Violate the law of gravity at your own risk at MY house
The dream is a battery that never runs out.
I really hope this thing came true in the near future as car companies / renewable energy in general are pouring huge money in research right now.
I have the 16 Pro Max that’s always plugged in, so I had no idea how good the battery life was. Went to the office a few days ago and forgot the charger at home and was planning on asking people if they got a spare charger. Finished the working day on 25%. That’s more than enough for me.
If it is plugged in most of the time you might want to consider “AlDente”.
MacOS has a built in 80% limiter for Macs that stay plugged in a lot. There is even a menu bar option to trigger a charge to 100% before needing to leave.
Yeah but it that one doesn’t always trigger for me, and it does stay plugged in a lot.
I check mine periodically and it seems to work all the time. Are you on the latest MacOS and patch level?
Not required on modern Mac. Have not used it and compared my battery health to those who have and my health is better with more cycles.
Optimised battery charging never correctly figures out my habits which are very random, so I use Al Dente.
As a developer who spends 99% of the time docked to a monitor though I’d happily take performance over efficiency…
Same, these are Pro machines designed for Pros who need performance. I have an M1 Pro 16" machine and the battery life is already more than enough to get me through the day.
Buy a desktop/Mac Studio. That’s literally what they’re for. Want or need to work remote? Use an iPad to remote into your desktop for performance. These days the only reason to buy a workstation laptop is if you need performance remotely somewhere that doesn’t have good internet or you’re mobile 75% of the time.
What do you use to remote in from your iPad?
VNC client works well.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/allow-apple-remote-desktop-to-access-your-mac-mh11851/mac
https://support.apple.com/guide/remote-desktop/welcome/mac
Edit: I feel like I should add that you should never expose your computer’s remote access software to the internet. Use a VPN server or Reverse Proxy setup. Both can be done easily using a Raspberry Pi.
VNC is horrible to do actual productive work on. I doubt you do this to actually work a full day
I was recently turned on to NoMachine and have been testing it. I’m fairly impressed with it’s performance.
Though fair warning the client (and server for that matter) are a bit janky by end-user standards.
It can be pretty clumsy on Windows but I’ve found that Apple’s server/client works pretty well, at least over a LAN. Not sure what the iPad client situation is like.
It’s clumsy over a LAN, nevermind the Internet. Apple’s VNC is not a patch on something like Microsoft’s RDP. It’s a poor solution, and depends on you having a good connection at the remote end. And you’ll also be using a tiny iPad screen. If you buy an iPad Pro and Magic folio and a Mac Studio then you’ve probably spent as much as a MacBook Pro.
IPad will never be a full replacement for a workstation and remoting is definitely more finnicky and often laggy with a ton of security risks you have to worry about than just having a laptop. Not to mention literally everything is better and more capable on the laptop. The screen is gonna suck on the iPad for work being so damn small and you don’t have anywhere near the same feature set.
If you travel especially it’s better to have a dedicated laptop as well since you don’t have to worry about internet at all for many tasks and can actually use it on the move including planes. Everything including the actual OS is better for mobile use. Only exception is maybe drawing, but 95% of folks don’t really do that for a living. I agree with looking into a desktop machine in general if you aren’t traveling though.
if you turn on power saving mode when you’re doing light tasks the laptop runs forever at 50% brightness.
I find myself doing that like twice a month so it’s not a concern at all, battery life is phenomenal for the power these machines have while producing minimal heat and being completely silent.
The battery life is amazing with lightweight workloads. Unfortunately when doing anything more it becomes fairly mediocre. With my normal dev work it lasts about 2-3 hours at best.
Yeah, Apple’s secret sauce isn’t necessarily perf/watt in an all-core load (although they’re obviously near the top there as well) but in idle power consumption. I’m guessing that M3 does better here, but I remember seeing a Phoronix test/review that showed that when capped at 15 W, the latest Ryzen laptop CPU beats the M2 in all-core workloads, although the M2 gets better battery life in “normal” workloads.
on Max or Pro chip?
You running a ton of containers or something? I have a fairly intensive set of Docker containers running at all times and still usually get a full-ish work day out of my M1 Pro MBP
I usually get around 10 hours doing front-end dev and design work.
I just got the 2023 MBP 16" (base model) and honestly I’m insanely impressed with the battery life. I work in the living room from about 8am to 6pm and have ended the day with ~20% battery life. So when they say all day battery life they aren’t kidding.
Obviously if I’m on non-stop zoom meetings or doing more intensive stuff it might not last, but so far its been impressive.
Yes, I too would like for humanity to invent perpetual motion
I’ve long thought Apple sets targets for battery life and keeps it roughly the same each generation, so other hardware features like better efficiency are spent on improving the software with new headline capabilities, or a change in design…
… because that’s the stuff that sells the products to the masses.
“Oh look honey!!! Another wall of numbers that don’t matter!”
Law of diminishing returns. You can only innovate so much as the generations proceed further.
It definitely feels like there was a price jump this series with the base model starting at 8GB, so you have to pay a lot more just to get 16
You only feel that way because they lowered the entry price for the 14 Pro - the 13 Pro was just as much of a raw deal
Not really, discounting the 13 inch MacBook Pro that also has 8GB of ram, the cheapest MacBook Pro with Pro chips was and is still $2000. Now the M3 base chip is $1600 for the Pro, and even accounting for the jump to 16GB of ram (nobody should be buying that 8gb of ram model) it’s still only $1800.
Then again the 15 inch MacBook Air is only going to be $100 cheaper than the same specs Pro models. (And why they’re redundant but that’s another story.
By the time you pay $1800 for 16gb of ram on the M3 why not add $200 (10% more) and get 18gb on the M3 Pro?
Exactly, Apple is always enticing you to upgrade, that $1800 model is decent, but at $2000 you have even more ram (since the M3 Pro is now 18GB) and a slightly faster chip.
This is exactly why Apple carefully designs their pricing strucutre. They want you to think that.
Yes, they spend tens of millions of dollars designing and building machines they don’t want people to buy, just so they can make a couple hundred more dollars on a different machine. And if the M3 outsells the Pro because most people don’t want to spend $200 for benefits they don’t need, well, that’s, hey, look over there!
I never said they don’t want you to buy it, I said they design their pricing structure so you spend more. The prices for upgrades don’t often reflect their true value, but a carefully chosen price point by Apple that leaves you in a position to justify spending a little more.
They design their pricing structure to have a compelling offering at a series of price points??? Have you called the police?
Are you being deliberately facetious?
so basically you are saying the 15” MBA at 16GB RAM is not worth it vs the 13” MBP at 8GB RAM?
The issue is that the 15" M2 Air and the 14" M3 Pro are too close together. The only really save here is that Apple jumped up the M3 to appear in the 14" Pro before the 13" Air this time. Maybe that will be the plan going forward? That Pros get new gen chips first.
The M3 MBP and 15" M2 Air are too close together with 8GB and the M3 in the new 14" chassis without 16GB ram just isn’t good value proposition for an MBP model. Now if the M3 MBP only cane with 16GB or 24gb it would be a slam dunk… but telling people an MBP with 8GB is a bad joke and the upgrade to 16GB is way too expensive in a $1600 laptop.
I haven’t played with pricing across the laptops as its not my area of interest but I do know comparing the mini to the studio usually results in a beefed up mini costing as much as the studio with a lower tier processor; the memory and storage costs are such that you need to pay attention to where other models start.
M2 air - consumer / light creativity laptop & THE Mac laptop to buy in this price range.
M3 base 8GB RAM MBP - corporate purchase computer for managers who are running MS office and keynote.
Expensive for what it is but they’ll claim back some of the sales tax.
No consumers and genuine pros should ever buy this machine - it’s not meant for you.
The M3 MBP and 15" M2 Air are too close together with 8GB and the M3 in the new 14" chassis without 16GB ram just isn’t good value proposition for an MBP model.
I dunno, I think there is a bit of overlap for the 13" MBA and base 14" MBP. Once you spec them for similar internals, it’s a $200 difference which nets you the XDR/ProMotion panel, extra cooling, and built-in HDMI 2.1 and SD card slots, while also reducing (albeit not eliminating) the arbitrary external monitor limit.
The problem is that the base MBA is such a good computer in its own right that it’s debatable whether it’s worth speccing the internals higher rather than just committing to a slightly more expensive MBP to start.
Form factor was a huge deciding factor in me getting the MBA over MBP
I got the baseline M1 14" and it was £1,800. The equivalent now is £2,100
The UK definitely saw a price jump because everything got more expensive & Apple saw opportunity in that.
I don’t think it was a global price hike, though.
Opportunity?
I think it’s just called an exchange rate. They (and all other companies) adjust pricing periodically to adjust for devaluing currencies.
That can be explained by some of it. However, firms also strategise with their pricing adjustments to best benefit them. It’s a missed opportunity if they do not.
Sure because the pound has gotten a lot worse. That’s not on Apple
Apple is lagging behind the competition on purpose, to prize gouge consumers. Every other laptop in its class comes with 16 GB standard.
Yeah they’ve been building a bad spot in terms of their ram. They use the excuse of it being an SOC, but the reality is that means the GPU is actually using the same ram, and it’s even more important to have a base configuration that’s decent.
Also even worse since they bumped the M3 Pro base ram to 18GB.
Performance and efficiency aside, I just can’t stand the new style of trackpad… my wife has the 15 inch air, and both her and I find it incredibly difficult to click and drag files around, and accidentally clicking on shit that we didn’t mean to.
I use 3 finger drag and drag and drop is not a problem at all. Give it a try if you are not using that method
It’s a laptop, efficiency should be the number one priority, then performance.
I didn’t check off the flickering option.
My only complain is the lack of Wi-Fi 7. Considering that a laptop lasts several years, would be great if it comes with the latest Wi-Fi tech.
My only complain is the lack of Wi-Fi 7
As /u/januszeal pointed out, WiFi 7 has not been completely finalized yet. Additionally, it’s not like WiFi 6E is slow or will become slow in the useful lifetime of this laptop.
We just got some Wi-Fi 7 APs installed in our studio and we happen to purchase a new Windows workstation with Wi-Fi 7. It’s almost double the performance of Wi-Fi 6E.
I understand it’s not relevant to a lot of users but it’s a day and night difference when accessing network drives with Wi-Fi 7. That’s a minor disappointment considering that Apple is one of the early adopters of Wireless AC and Wireless N.
new to apple?
Probably old enough to remember that Apple used to be the early adopter of new tech (Wireless AC, USB-C, Thunderbolt and USB)
Sounds like a review where you go out of your way to make the best in class laptop sound just ok.
The Mac user base will never cease to amaze me.
Mac users, when M3 is announced: literally no one needs that much power.
Also Mac users in regards to M3: Psh, you call that powerful? Look at how this other niche device trounces it for performance.
Sigh.
Do people think it’s worth upgrading from M1 MBP Stock 14inch to M3? Macbooks in general are pretty expensive so I try to wait till my laptop is way too slow / about to die to upgrade but M3 looks pretty great from a performance standpoint.
No.
If you don’t have a reason to upgrade then I wouldn’t invent a reason.
Still destroyed on Blender GPU by low end 4050 mobile.
Got a figure for that?
It’s in the linked article. Search for “blender” and it’s the second instance that’s for GPU. M3 Pro is half the performance of the slowest 4050 mobile to almost 1/3 of the fastest 4050 mobile.
Bruh. They tested it on blender 3.3🤦🤦🤦. It doesn’t use the M3 RT cores. Only 4.0 has proper metal RT support. Wish notebookcheck actually used the latest blender version rather than the outdated ones.
In blender 4.0 the M3 Max is between a 4070 and 4080 laptop. Closer to the 4080.
It’s already been tested on Blender 4.0. M3 Pro is nearly half the performance of 4050 mobile. And, M3 Max is less than half the performance of 4090 mobile.
I think that’s the point. If you’re doing graphics design or rendering, you should be using an max. Pro is a like office apps, some programming, etc. and the baser model for people that want to play media and browse socialmedia.
It’s a pretty nice lineup.
Its tested using blender 3.3. No support for RT cores on M3.
I sure would like them to start prioritizing efficiency before performance/features in products like the watch. A two/three day Apple Watch battery would make me far more likely to use it for sleep tracking.
I think they’re starting to with the ultra at least. Got an Ultra 2 last week, ran 15 miles today with always on display + cellular connection on and had 80% left after the run. Was really impressed. Hopefully that comes to the regular watches down the line.
Wait do Apple Watches not last 2-3 days?
My old Samsung Gear S3 Frontier was rated for 3 days and often went 4-5 way back in 2016. I cannot imagine owning a smartwatch that lasted less than 3.
They can last multiple days if you turn off the AOD.
That depends on what you do. I can’t imagine that watched lasted that long while doing regular workouts
Why would you need it to last 3 days?
Because a watch that lasts 18 hours (apples rating after looking it up) means I cant sleep with it.
Why do I need to justify wanting longer battery life when competitors have offered 2-3 times the life for 7 years?
This is outrageous. It’s so easy to throw it on a charger while you shower. It would be great if the battery lasts longer but it’s insane to say you can’t sleep with it now.
What a laughably bad excuse.
How long are your showers? Mine are usually about 15 minutes.
Per the US EPA the average shower is 8 Minutes
Per Apple the watch takes 2.5 hours to charge to full. 1.5 for 80% or about .5% a minute for the first 90 minutes
Even with my 15 minute showers I’d get a ~13% charge. That’s a little of 2 hours worth of battery. Idk about you but generally I need at minimum 6, and try to shoot for 8 hours of sleep.
To get a solid 8 hours of life you would need a ~45% charge. So anyone who wants to charge this during a shower better be taking 50 minute showers at a minimum.
I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest a company compete with on something a basic as battery life when their competitors have proven it possible for 7 years…
Dude. Charge it when you shower and charge it while you’re winding down before sleep. I literally do it daily. You’re claiming that what is totally easy and doable is impossible. Get a grip.
what is totally easy and doable is impossible
Yeah I never said it was impossible. Don’t misrepresent my argument just because you can’t defend yours.
It’s of course possible to charge the watch, it’s just inconvenient to have to deal with multiple times a day. For 2.5 hours of not using it every day. You get less than a full days (24 hours) usage.
You’re making excuses for Apple not competing, and blaming the consumer for simply wanting a product that competes, and isn’t inconvenient.
I mean I charged my Series 6 either in the hour before bed or would just let it charge while on my way to work in the car. So usually I averaged about 45 minutes to an hour without it on and charging a day. It usually never got back up to 100% but it stayed within about 85% to 30% everyday with those habits. I now have an Ultra 2 and only charge it for about 45 minutes to an hour every other day.
While it would be great to having longer battery life like Polar or Garmin or Fitbit or other dedicated sports watches the battery life of the Apple Watch doesn’t prevent you from using it for sleep tracking (which from my use will at most take 10% of battery if you had a pretty restless night of sleep).
They can last up until 3 days i think. My 7 series lasts me 2 days and a night before I need to charge it. (AOD off now because the battery has started to degrade)
“They can last multiple days if you turn off all the features you paid for”
I have a series 7 and use it every night for tracking. I just plug it in about an hour before I go to sleep and then again for an hour in the morning when I’m getting ready. I wouldn’t mind it having a longer battery life, but I rarely find it running low
Yeah I think something like this would work for me as well. Just need to figure out the schedule. I’m currently throwing it on the charger at like 60% every night so surely it’d work
I have a charger in my car and just chargers it during my commute.
Yeah mine is usually between 50 and 65 when I charge at night. In the morning, it is usually 95+ after an hour of charging
Do you realise how inconvenient that sounds? You need a daily routine to use it.
I guess. It seems pretty easy to me. I have the charger on my bedside table. I slip watch on there as I go to brush my teeth, etc, I read a book or watch TV for an hour and slip it on and go to bed. In the morning, I turn off the alarm and connect it to the charger. I just put my watch on last before leaving the house. It’s like 15 seconds of “work” and we already do routines in the morning and evening. If the battery lasted three days, I guess that would be cool but I’d have to remember every 3 days to charge it. Doesn’t seem that different honestly.
If you charge it while you’re having a shower, and don’t have the always on display, you can pretty much wear it all the time with all the monitoring bells and whistles on.
I wouldn’t mind if that extended to phones as well. I’d happily have a phone 3mm thicker if that meant double the battery capacity
Do you really think adding just 3mm to the battery would do that?
In general smart phones are not going to last much more than a day. That they last a day is good enough to stop battery panic.
If a phone lasted 1 1/2 days, enough to convince you to not plug it in at night you would still have battery worry on day two.
Like they aren’t doing that already. Maybe they just can’t with this tiny battery.
Fast charge from 0% works in 75 minutes. How is that preventative? Charge the watch while you get ready/cook dinner/etc.
I hope the band connector redesign and possible skipping of a year before much bigger updates in the Apple watch X/Ultra 3 lead to big increases in battery life
I don’t see how redesigning the band connector will lead to improved battery life…
In a small device like the watch, the attachment mechanism and all the structure needed for it takes substantial space where every millimeter is at a premium
all the structure needed for it takes substantial space where every millimeter is at a premium
The rumored magnetic system that the Apple Watch X is supposed to be using does not look like it will be saving much space at all, if any.
My ultra 2 lasts for 3 days just fine. You just have to disable always on. Day is almost over and I did a 35min workout and it’s at 88% right now.
m3 pro sucks