If You’re Tired of MacBooks Winning…

Thoughts on the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite laptops compared against Apple's M3 MacBook.

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[rek]

Apple got me entirely based on the battery life. I have zero brand loyalty, it’s simply that battery is *mandatory* for my work and leisure. Very excited for competition in the space.

[destructodisk]

"I don't think Microsoft will allow 8GB 256GB devices." Please don't look at the current Surface devices 😬

[SeanCassiere]

Just a developer's POV here, but in my opinion, the part that really gave us devs the push to move our apps to be native on Apple Silicon was the knowledge that all Macs would be moving to this architecture in less than a couple years. It really was one of those 'you snooze you lose' moments, where not releasing an M1-compatible app as-soon-as-possible could actually lead to people leaving your app for a competitor.
Contrast that to the Windows market, which is so large, and these new ARM machines are probably going to account for less than a percent of Windows devices deployed. These statistics certainly aren't any positive incentives for devs on Windows, who then have to compile to ARM and maintain support for it (which can be very costly).

[paulharrison]

The Mac Studio has removable proprietary SSDs. However, Apple will not sell you an upgrade SSD yet. This is Apple at its worst, where making the Mac Studio upgradable would be really easy but Apple still choose to force you to buy a new Mac Studio if you want more storage.

[gabrielnelson]

Honestly, the better these Windows devices do, the better it will be for all the end consumers, both Windows and Apple users alike, since this will put at least some more pressure on Apple to step up their baseline configurations or at least charge less.

[ThomasGodart]

Dave, there is something you didn't say and I'm guessing that you didn't know, is that Rosetta is not only a software, it's a hardware as well: the Apple Silicon M series embarks an emulation layer on the CPU cores that Rosetta activates, and when it does then the CPU core that has switched won't multitask with Apple ARM native apps anymore; and that's why Rosetta is so strangely good and barely suffers from any slowing down from native code. PCs won't have that technology so don't expect emulation to perform well there

[m-ksh]

The biggest test would be the variants they've shown so far - as you said, "23W" and "80W". They may perform much better than a regular M2 and M3, but we don't know yet how efficient they are compared to the sheer efficiency the M-series chips have. And as much as the performance of Apple Silicon was good, I think the most amazing thing about them is just how energy-efficient they are. 5-8W on light tasks! And that's without fans!

I'd like to think we've past the point of being concerned about power in a thin and light laptop. The biggest test for these X Elite chips is simply to normalise 15-16 hours laptop battery life. Exciting times!

(Also, light a fire under Apple's buttocks and make them realize that laptops starting at 8GB RAM and asking USD200 for a RAM upgrade is rich for a multi-trillion dollar company.)

[ThisIsTechToday]

So great seeing you this past week, man. Always love seeing what you’re working on.

[MrIzzyfunk]

I’m not tired of MacBooks winning. I’m tired of terrible PCs.

[homidjohn]

I can picture the Surface ones having the 8/256gb base configuration for $1, 699.

[feederbrian]

I remember trying to edit on a windows laptop and wondering why on earth the performance went down, then learning that it gets kneecapped without the wall plug. In my mind, that’s hilariously absurd.
The M1 Max not only blew everything I’ve tried out of the water, but I got full performance and exceptional battery life. Apple proved you CAN have your cake and eat it too.
I’m skeptical that Windows with its fragmentation between x86 and ARM architectures, NVIDIA, AMD and now Intel’s accelerators can offer what a MacBook offers for creative workflows.

[AZisk]

Saw the X Elite in person last week and I can say it looks VERY promising.

[idka]

I need to replace my travel laptop that's 7 years old. I keep getting drawn towards apple, but it's apple... why is it so hard for a Windows machine to match its performance and battery

[river.]

Build quality, speaker, battery efficiency and marketing

[shApYT]

Absolutely 0 reason to solder in nvme storage. Flash chips wear and will inevitable brick the device if you can't easily replace it. It would be unforgivable. There is no performance or security benefit. Talk about planned obsolescence.

[serialtoon]

I dont know if i watch Dave for his tech analysis or to see what new hair style hes rocking.

[willfancher]

Windows emulation also does translation to native arm code. But they haven't (at least not yet) had the hardware support Rosetta has. It's a very small hardware feature, but Apple Silicon can flip a switch that makes the memory ordering (part of the optimization within the chip that lets things execute out of order) behave like x86. Makes the chip a bit slower, but without it you have to insert tons of extra instructions to emulate the same effect. Making the chip slightly slower that way is way better than having to insert all those extra instructions, which is why Rosetta is so much better than Windows' x86 emulation

[ArthropodSpidey]

Dude went from homeless to full K-Pop with the hair

[crikxouba]

So nearly four years in, and the competition hasn't even half caught up with Apple's architecture

[dgsprysoup]

Dave, the TDPs are calculated by Qualcomm as the total device power draw. 23W TDP refers to the entire system draw including a display, speakers, keyboard and more. Same for the 80W, so hoping for a fanless version to replace my MacBook Air!